LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 6 ^ if 

♦ D 



1 



Chautauqua Library..... Garnet Series. 



READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 



ITALY. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY Kj 

DONALD Gv^M ITCH ELL. 

(IK MARVEL.; 



BOSTON: 
CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, 

117 FRANKLIN STREET. 
1885. 



i^f' 



CONTENTS. 



ITALIAN WRITERS: — 

PAGE 

I. — Dante 3 

II. — Petrarch 33 

III. — Machiavelli 57 

LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME: — 

Preface 121 

HoRATius 147 

The Battle of the Lake Regillus 177 

Virginia 217 

The Prophecy of Capys 245 

Pompeii 265 



Copyright, 1885, 
By rand, AVERY, & CO. 



LORD MACAULAY. 



It is now sixty years since an article upon Milton, 
in "The Edinburgh Review," called the attention of 
shrewd readers to a new English v^Titer, who, in the 
judgment of many, showed a scholarship far keener 
than Brougham's, with a gift of style more captivating 
than that of Jeffrey, and flashes of wit rivalling those 
of that other veteran of the " Review," — Rev. Syd- 
ney Smith. Two years later, appeared the study of 
Machiavelli from the same hand ; and thereafter in 
quick succession, with like eloquent periods, and show 
of abundant learning, and piquant epigrams, followed 
the papers on " History " and " Hallam " and " South- 
ey's Colloquies." Americans quickly caught a relish 
for this new literary savor ; and, in the year 1 840, two 
little bouncing, green-covered volumes of essays intro- 
duced to the readers of our Western world — Thomas 
Babington Macaulay. 



iv LORD MA CAUL AY. 

He was born of good, vigorous Scotch stock 
(upon the father's side) ; his great-grandfather, 
Aulay Macaulay, was minister of Coll, and had four- 
teen children; his grandfather, John, was minister 
of Inverary, and had twelve children. His father, 
Zachary, went to Jamaica when young, and brought 
thence experience and indignations which made him 
an efficient co-worker with Wilberforce. Through 
this latter, Zachary was made governor of the ill-fated 
colony of Sierra Leone, and returned thence just at 
the close of the last century, to establish himself as 
agent of the colony, and African merchant, in Lon- 
don. On the year of his return, he married a pretty 
Quaker girl of Bristol (a protegee of Mistress Hannah 
More) ; and, in a twelvemonth thereafter, his oldest 
child — the subject of this sketch — was born at Roth- 
ley, in a beautiful valley of Leicestershire, where the 
young mother was visiting an aunt (elder sister of 
Zachary Macaulay), who presided over the charming 
old country-house of the Babingtons. 

The child was sound in wind and limb, and con- 
tinued exceptionally sound for a space of more than 
fifty years. The father's first London home was be- 
tween Threadneedle and Lombard Streets; and the 
curious in those matters tell us of a bare space — 



LORD MACAULAY. V 

Draper's Garden — near by, where the baby Macau- 
lay was wheeled by his nurse, to catch sunshine. 
His boyish memories, however, belonged to a later 
home at Clapham, then an out-of-town village. There 
was his first schooling, under a private master (his 
father being fairly rich) ; and there he budded out 
into young poems and precocious talk. His pleasant 
biographer (Trevelyan) tells of a visit the bright boy 
made at Strawberry Hill, — Walpole's old show-place. 
There was a spilling of hot drink during the visita- 
tion, that came near to scalding the lad ; and when 
the sympathizing hostess asked after his suffering, 
"Thank you, madam," said he: "the agony is 
abated." 

The story is eminently credible ; and so are others, 

— of his reading his poetry to Miss Hannah More, 
and getting an approving nod of her gray curls and 
mob-cap. 

At Cambridge, where he went at the usual age, he 
studied what he would, and disdained what he would, 

— as he did all through his life. Mathematics were a 
standing grief to him, and odious j or, if dwelling on 
them, twisting their certainties into probabilities, and 
so making them subject to the world of "ifs and 
buts " which he loved to start buzzing about the ears 



VI LORD MAC AULA Y. 

of those who loved the exact sciences. But, if he 
missed thus some of the schedule honors, he won 
others. Up and down in those Cambridge cofejies, 
he was a man looked for, and listened to, and ap- 
plauded. Scholastic honors did come in their time, 
too, in spite of his lunges outside the traces. There 
was a medal for poetic work (not of his best) ; and 
a fellowship, at last, which gave him a needed, though 
small, income ; for his father's Afric business had 
failed, and there were no home moneys for him, nor 
any thence, thereafter. The father was too old, and 
too full of scruples, to beat money out of other peo- 
ple's preserves. 

The first writings of Macaulay which came to pub- 
lic issue, were in " Knight's Quarterly Magazine." 
Among them were criticisms on Italian writers (Dante 
and Petrarch) ; a remarkable imaginary conversation 
between Cowley and Milton ; and the glittering, jin- 
gling "Battle of Ivry," — full of that rush and verbal 
splendor which he loved all his life, and which he 
brought, in later years, to a re-heralding of the old 
"Lays of Rome." 

On the very next year after this " Battle of Ivry " 
had sparkled into print, appeared the paper on Mil- 
ton, to which allusion has been made, and which 



LORD MA CAUL AY. Vll 

opened London doors to the fresh-fledged student 
at law. 

But he did not stay at law. Diarists of those days 
— such as Crabb Robinson — speak of a young man 
of five or six and twenty, who has emerged upon the 
dinner-giving public, and is astounding old habitues 
by his fulness and briUiancy of talk. He has not, to 
be sure, those lighter graces of conversation which 
shone shortly thereafter under the mirrors of Gore 
House and the smiles of Lady Blessington ; but he 
comes to be a table-match for Sydney Smith, and is 
courted by Lady Holland, and sought after by the 
poet Rogers who is living on the honors of his 
*' Memory " and his bank. His alliance with " The 
Edinburgh Review " makes him the pet of the great 
Whigs ; and, through Lansdowne, he finds his way 
into Parliawiient, making speeches there which revived 
the memory of the younger Pitt. He lacked, indeed, 
the true oratorical manner : he scorned studied graces 
of utterance. Tory critics said he wrote his speeches, 
and committed them to memory. There was no need 
for that. Words tripped to his tongue as easily as to 
his pen. Yet he was rather ungainly — his cravat often 
awry. He had a square, un-American face, and a 
shaggy brow. There were no delicate modulations of 



vill LORD MAC AULA Y. 

voice, no art of pantomime, no conscious or uncon- 
scious assumption of graceful attitudes, little light 
and shade in his elocution; but there was vigor, 
nervous directness, no broken sentence, no word 
missing; and when subject-matter enfevered him, 
there was the hurry and the overstrained voice of 
extreme earnestness. 

Meanwhile the writing for the " Review " went on. 
An official position assured him a moderate income ; 
but, his father's family being largely dependent on 
him, he needed more. A Whig government offered 
him place in India, which he accepted. No Oriental 
glamour allured him, and he was in chase of no " Light 
of Asia ; " but the new position was worth ten thou- 
sand pounds per annum. He counted upon saving 
the half of it, and returning in five years with a 
moderate fortune. He did better even than this, — 
shortening his period of exile by nearly a twelve- 
month, and bringing back thirty thousand pounds. 
His sister (later. Lady Trevelyan) went with him as 
the mistress of his Calcutta household ; and his affec- 
tionate and most tender relations with this, as with his 
younger sister, are beautifully set forth in the charm- 
ing biography by Otto Trevelyan. It is a biography 
that everybody should read. We are brought to no 



LORD MACAULAY. IX 

post-mortem in it, and no opening of old sores. It 
is modest, courteous, discreet, and full. 

Macaulay did monumental work in India upon the 
Penal Code. He also kept up there his voracious 
habits of reading and study. Titles only of what he 
read and re-read in India, and on the long voyages 
(by sailing-ship in those days) thither and back, would 
fill pages. A paper or two for the " Review " kept 
him in the mind of British readers. A History of 
England was hovering in his thought, and the music 
of the " Lays of Rome " was taking shape, in the 
intervals of his study. 

His father died while Macaulay was upon the voy- 
age home, — a father wholly unlike the son in his 
rigidities and asperities, but always venerated, and 
in these latter years treated with a noble generosity. 

A first visit to Italy was made shortly after the re- 
turn from India, of which there is pleasant though 
fragmentary record in the Trevelyan biography. It 
is in Rome itself that he puts some of the last touches 
to the "Lays," — goes to the site of the old bridge 
across the Tiber, that he may determine with his own 
eyes if Horatius could indeed see, from that scene 
ot his " brave deed," " his home upon the Aventine." 

It was not until the year 1842 that he took courage 



X LORD MACAU LAY. 

to submit to print that solitary book of his verse ; for 
he did hesitate, — did doubt the wisdom of putting in 
peril his literary reputation by such overture in rhyme. 
It extorted a paean of praise from that muscular critic, 
Professor Wilson; while the fastidious Leigh Hunt, 
representing the dilettanti^ writes, begging for a little 
money, and regretting that the ^' Lays " have not the 
" true poetical aroma which breathes from * The Faerie 
Queene.' " 

At least, there is virility in them, and no maunder- 
ing : it is the work of a man who loved " bottled porter 
better than Falernian." There is, too, a scholarly 
handling, with high historic air blowing through ; his 
prosody is up to the rules ; the longs and shorts are 
split to a hair's-breadth, — jingling and merry where 
the sense calls for it, and sober and resonant where 
meaning is weighty, and flashing — when need is — 
with sword-play and spear-heads that glitter and 
waver over marching men; but nowhere the tremu- 
lous poetic siisuri'us that falters, and touches, and 
detains by its mystic sounds, tempting one into dim 
border-lands where higher and more inspired singers 
find their way, and thence call to us. His sandals of 
verse are not winged. Christabel is not of his school, 
nor the ''star-shaped" shadows of Wordsworth. 



LORD MACAULAY. XI 

The parliamentary career of Macaulay, after his re- 
turn from India, was notable for some speeches on 
copyright, for advocacy of liberal dealing with the 
Catholics of Ireland, and for his opposition to the 
Corn Laws. It was also notable for a repulse from his 
old supporters in Edinburgh. Certain arts of the poli- 
tician he could not learn : he could not truckle ; he 
could not hob-nob with constituents who made vulgar 
claims upon him ; he could not hsten to twaddle from 
visiting-committees without breaking into a righteous 
wrath that hurt his chances. Edinburgh, however, 
afterward cleared the record, by giving him a triumph- 
ant return. 

Meantime that wonderful history had been written, 
and its roll of magniloquent periods made echo in 
every quarter of the literary world. Its success was 
phenomenal. After the issue of its second couplet of 
volumes, the publishers sent to the author a check for 
twenty thousand pounds on accoiait. With its Macau- 
lay indorsement, it is a trophy which is guarded, and 
which will find its way to the British Museum. 

The history is a partisan history, but it is the work 
of a bold and out- spoken and manly partisan. The 
colors he uses are intense and glaring, but they are 
blended in the making of his great panorama of King 



xii LORD MAC AULA Y. 

William's times, with a marvellous art. We are told 
that he was an advocate, and not a philosopher ; that 
he was a rhetorician, and not a poet : we may grant 
this, and more ; and yet I think we shall continue to 
cherish his work. Men of greater critical acumen and 
nicer exploration may sap the grounds of some of his 
judgments ; cooler writers, and those of more self- 
restraint, may draw the fires by which his indignations 
are kindled ; but it will be very long before the world 
will cease to find high intellectual refreshment in the 
crackle of his epigrams, in his artful deployment of 
testimony, and in the roll of his sonorous periods. 

It was in the year 1856, when Macaulay had done 
his last work upon the history, that he moved away 
from his bachelor quarters m the Albany (Piccadilly), 
and established himself at Holly Lodge, which, under 
its new name of Airlie Lodge, may still be found upon 
a winding lane, in that labyrinth of city lanes which 
lies between Kensington Gardens and Holland House. 
There was a bit of green lawn attached, which he came 
to love in those last days of his, though he had been 
without strong rural proclivities. But now, and there, 
among the thorn-trees reddening into bloom, and the 
rhododendrons bursting their buds, the May mornings 
were "delicious." He enjoys, too, the modest hospi- 



LORD MACAULAY. xiii 

talities he can show in a home of his o^vn. There are 
notes in his journal or letters of " a goose for Michael- 
mas," and of " a chine and oysters for Christmas Eve," 
and excellent " audit ale " on Lord Mayor's Day. 
There, too, at Holly Lodge, comes to him in August, 
1857, when he was "very sad about India," an offer 
of a peerage. He accepts it, as he had accepted all 
the good things of life, cheerily and squarely, and is 
thenceforward Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 

He appears from time to time in the House of 
Lords, but never speaks there. His speaking-days are 
over. A little unwonted fluttering of the heart warns 
him that the end is not far off. A visit to the English 
lakes and to Scotland in 1859 does not give him any 
access of strength. He worries very much because 
his beloved sister, Lady Trevelyan, was to go away the 
next year, to join her husband at Madras. "This 
prolonged parting," he says, " this slow sipping of the 
vinegar and the gall, is terrible." 

And the parting came earlier than he thought, and 
easier. For on a day of December, in the same year, 
he died in his hbrary-chair. His nephew and biog- 
rapher had parted from him in the morning, at which 
time " he was sitting, with his head bent forward on 
his chest, in a languid and drowsy reverie." 



XIV LORD MA CAUL AY. 

In the evening, a little before seven, Lady Trevelyan 
was summoned. As we drove up to the porch of my 
uncle's house, the maids ran, crying, out into the dark- 
ness to meet us, and we knew that all was over." 

The date was Dec. 28, and his age fifty-nine. He 
was buried in Westminster Abbey; and the stone 
which marks his tomb, is at the feet of the statue of 
Addison. 



' DANTE ALIGHIERI. 

The distinguished poet, whose character is reviewed 
in the following pages, was born in Florence in May of 
the year 1265. It was a time of fierce political strug- 
gle. The contest between Church and State, known 
as the War of Guelphs and Ghibellines, was at its 
height. By birth allied to the Guelphs, Dante was, by 
circumstances, compelled to identify himself with the 
other party. It was overthrown ; and he was exiled, 
and condemned to be burned alive if captured on 
Florentine soil. His life was thenceforward one of 
struggle, of poverty, and of discouragement; but it 
enabled him to give his genius to the compositions of 
those great poetical works which entitle him to be 
called the first great name in literature after the Dark 
Ages. He died at Ravenna in 132 1, being but little 
past middle life, but broken by the disheartening 
vicissitudes of his fortune. 

R. S. H. 



READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

. ITALIAN WRITERS 



l^Kniglifs Quarterly Magazine^ January, 1824.] 

I. 

DANTE. 

" Fairest of stars, last in the train of night 
If better thou belong not to the dawn, 
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn 
With thy bright circlet." MiLTON. 

In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double 
claim to precedency. He was the earliest and the 
greatest writer of his country. He was the first man 
who fully descried and exhibited the powers of his 
native dialect. The Latin tongue, which under the 
most favorable circumstances, and in the hands of the 
greatest masters, had still been poor, feeble, and singu- 
larly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of Dante, 
been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbar- 
ous words and idioms, was still cultivated ^vith super- 
stitious veneration, and received, in the last stage of 
corruption, more honors than it had deserved in the 
period of its life and vigor. It was the language of 
the cabinet, of the university, of the cliurch. It was 

3 



4 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

employed by all who aspired to distinction in the 
higher walks of poetry. In compassion to the igno- 
rance of his mistress, a cavalier might now and then 
proclaim his passion in Tuscan or Provengal rhymes. 
The vulgar might occasionally be edified by a pious 
allegory in the popular jargon. But no writer had 
conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and 
market-women should possess sufficient energy and 
precision for a majestic and durable work. Dante 
adventured first. He detected the rich treasures of 
thought and diction which still lay latent in their ore. 
He refined them into purity. He burnished them 
into splendor. He fitted them for every purpose of 
use and magnificence. And he has thus acquired the 
glory, not only of producing the finest narrative poem 
of modern times, but also of creating a language dis- 
tinguished by unrivalled melody, and peculiarly capa- 
ble of furnishing to lofty and passionate thoughts their 
appropriate garb of severe and concise expression. 

To many this may appear a singular panegyric on 
the Italian tongue. Indeed, the great majority of the 
young gentlemen and young ladies, who, when they are 
asked whether they read Italian, answer "Yes," never 
go beyond the stories at the end of their grammar, — 
*' The Pastor Fido," — or an act of Artaserse. They 
could as soon read a Babylonian brick as a canto of 
Dante. Hence, it is a general opinion, among those 
who know little or nothing of the subject, that this 
admirable language is adapted only to the effeminate 
cant of sonneteers, musicians, and connoisseurs. 



DANTE. 5 

The fact is, that Dante and Petrarcli have been the 
Oromasdes and Arimanes of ItaHan Hterature. I wish 
not to detract from the merits of Petrarch. No one 
can doubt that his poems exhibit, amidst some imbe- 
cihty and more affectation, much elegance, ingenuity, 
and tenderness. They present us with a mixture 
which can only be compared to the whimsical concert 
described by the humorous poet of Modena : — 

" S' udian gli usignuoli, al primo albore, 
E gli asini cantar versi d' amore." ^ 

I am not, however, at present speaking of the intrin- 
sic excellences of his writings, which I shall take 
another opportunity to examine, but of the effect 
which they produced on the literature of Italy. The 
florid and luxurious charms of his style enticed the 
poets and the public from the contemplation of nobler 
and sterner models. In truth, the ugh a rude state of 
society is that in which great origmal works are most 
frequently produced, it is also that in which they are 
worst appreciated. This may appear paradoxical ; but 
it is proved by experience, and is consistent with rea- 
son. To be without any received canons of taste is 
good for the few who can create, but bad for the 
many who can only imitate and judge. Great and 
active minds cannot remain at rest. In a cultivated 
age they are too often contented to move on in the 
beaten path. But, where no path exists, they will 
make one. Thus the Iliad, the Odyssey, " The Divine 

* Tassoni : Secchia Rapila, canto i. stanza 6. 



6 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

Comedy," appeared in dark and half barbarous times ; 
and thus of the few original works which have been 
produced in raoix^' polished ages, we owe a large pro- 
portion to men in low stations and of uninformed 
minds. I will instance, in our own language, "The 
Pilgrim's Progress " and " Robinson Crusoe." Of all 
the prose works of fiction which we possess, these 
are, I will not say the best, but the most peculiar, the 
most unprecedented, the most inimitable. Had Bun- 
yan and Defoe been educated gentlemen, they would 
probably have published translations and imitations of 
French romances "by a person of quality." I am not 
sure that we should have had " Lear " if Shakspeare 
had been able to read Sophocles. 

But tliese circumstances, while they foster genius, are 
unfavorable to the science of criticism. Men judge 
by comparison. They are unable to estimate the gran- 
deur of an object when there is no standard by which 
they can measure it. One of the French philosophers 
(I beg Gerard's pardon) who accompanied Napoleon 
to Egypt, tells us, that, when he first visited the Great 
Pyramid, he was surprised to see it so diminutive. It 
stood alone in a boundless plain. There was nothing 
near it from which he could calculate its magnitude. 
But when the cam.p was pitched beside it, and the 
tents appeared like diminutive specks around its base, 
he then perceived the immensity of this mightiest work 
of man In the same manner, it is not till a crowd of 
petty v/riters has sprung up, that tlie merit of the great 
master spirits of literature is understood. 



DANTE. 7 

We had, indeed, ample proof that Dante was highly 
admired in his own and the following age. I wish 
that we had equal proof that he was admired for his 
excellences. But it is a remarkable corroboration of 
what has been said, that this great man seems to have 
been utterly unable to appreciate himself. In his 
treatise, " De Vulgari Eloquentia," he talks with satis- 
faction of what he has done for Italian literature, of 
the purity and correctness of his style. " Cependantj' 
says a favorite ' writer of mine, " // n'est ni pur, ni 
correct, viais il est createur:' Considering the difficul- 
ties with which Dante had to struggle, we may per- 
haps be more inclined than the French critic to allow 
him this praise. Still, it is by no means his highest 
or most peculiar title to applause. It is scarcely neces- 
sary to say that those qualities which escaped the notice 
of the poet himself were not likely to attract the atten- 
tion of the commentators. The fact is, that while the 
public homage was paid to some absurdities with which 
his works may be justly charged, and to many more 
which were falsely imputed to them ; while lecturers 
were paid to expound and eulogize his physics, his 
metaphysics, his theology, all bad of their kind ; while 
annotators labored to detect allegorical meanings of 
which the author never dreamed, — the great powers 
of his imagination, and the incomparable force of his 
style, were neither admired nor imitated. Arimanes 
had prevailed. " The Divine Comedy " was to that 

* Sismondi: Litterature du Midi de I'Europe. 



8 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

age what St. Paul's Cathedral was to Omai. The poor 
Otaheitean stared listlessly for a moment at the huge 
cupola, and ran into a toy-shop to play with beads. 
Italy, too, was charmed with literary trinkets, and 
played with them for four centuries. 

From the time of Petrarch to the appearance of Al- 
fieri's tragedies, we may trace in almost every page of 
Italian literature the influence of those celebrated son- 
nets, which, from the nature both of their beauties and 
their faults, were peculiarly unfit to be models for gen- 
eral imitation. Almost all the poets of that period, 
however different in the degree and quality of their 
talents, are characterized by great exaggeration, and, 
as- a necessary consequence, great coldness of senti- 
ment; by a passion for frivolous and tawdry orna- 
ment ; and, above all, by an extreme feebleness and 
diffuseness of style. Tasso, Marino, Guarini, Metas- 
tasio, and a crowd of writers of inferior merit and 
celebrity, were spellbound in the enchanted gardens 
of a gaudy and meretricious Alcina, who concealed 
debility and deformity beneath the deceitful semblance 
of loveliness and health. Ariosto, the great Ariosto 
himself, like his own Ruggiero, stooped for a time to 
linger amidst the magic flowers and fountains, and to 
caress the gay and painted sorceress. But to him, as 
to his own Ruggiero, had been given the omnipotent 
ring and the winged courser, which bore him from 
the paradise of deception to the regions of light and 
nature. 

The evil of which I speak was not confined to the 



DANTE, 9 

graver poets. It infected satire, comedy, burlesque. 
No person can admire more than I do the great mas- 
terpieces of wit and humor which Italy has produced. 
Still, I cannot but discern and lament a great defi- 
ciency, which is common to them all. I find in them 
abundance of ingenuity, of droll naivete, of profound 
and just reflection, of happy expression. Manners, 
characters, opinions, are treated with " a most learned 
spirit of human dealing." But something is still want- 
ing. We read, and we admire, and we yawn. We 
look in vain for the bacchanalian fury which inspired 
the comedy of Athens, for the fierce and withering 
scorn which animates the invectives of Juvenal and 
Dryden, or even for the compact and pointed diction 
which adds zest to the verses of Pope and Boileau. 
There is no enthusiasm, no energy, no condensation, 
nothing which springs from strong feeling, nothing 
which tends to excite it. Many fine thoughts and fine 
expressions reward the toil of reading. Still, it is a 
toil. "The Secchia Rapita," in some points the best 
poem of its kind, is painfully diffuse and languid. 
" The Animali Parlanti of Casti " is perfectly intolera- 
ble. I admire the dexterity of the plot and the liber- 
ality of the opinions. I admit that it is impossible to 
turn to a page which does not contain something that 
deserves to be remembered, but it is at least six times 
as long as it ought to be. And the garrulous feeble- 
ness of the style is a still greater fault than the length 
of the work. 

It may be thought that I have gone too far in at- 



lO READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

tributing these evils to the influence of the works and 
the fame of Petrarch. It cannot, however, be doubted 
that they have arisen, in a great measure, from a neg- 
lect of the style of Dante. This is not more proved 
by the decline of Italian poetry than by its resuscita- 
tion. After the lapse of four hundred and fifty years, 
there appeared a man capable of appreciating and 
imitating the father of Tuscan literature, — Vittorio 
Alfieri. Like the prince in the nursery tale, he sought 
and found the Sleeping Beauty within the recesses 
which had so long concealed her from mankind. The 
portal was indeed rusted by time, the dust of ages 
had accumulated on the hangings, the furniture was 
of antique fashion, and the gorgeous color of the 
embroidery had faded ; but the living charms which 
were well worth all the rest remained in the bloom of 
eternal youth, and well rewarded the bold adventurer 
who roused them from their long slumber. In every 
line of the " Philip " and the " Saul," the greatest 
poems, I think, of the eighteenth century, we may 
trace the influence of that mighty genius which has 
immortalized the ill-starred love of Francesca, and 
the paternal agonies of Ugolino. Alfieri bequeathed 
the sovereignty of Italian literature to the author 
of the " Aristodemus," — a man of genius scarcely in- 
ferior to his own, and a still more devoted disciple of 
the great Florentine. It must be acknowledged that 
this eminent writer has sometimes pushed too far his 
idolatry of Dante. To borrow a sprightly illustration 
from Sir John Denham, he has not only imitated his 



DANTE. 1 1 

garb, but borrowed his clothes. He often quotes his 
phrases ; and he has, not very judiciously as it appears 
to me, imitated his versification. Nevertheless, he has 
displayed many of the higher excellences of his mas- 
ter ; and his works may justly inspire us with a hope 
that Italian language will long flourish under a new 
literary dynasty, or, rather, under the legitimate line, 
which has at length been restored to a throne long 
occupied by specious usurpers. 

The man to whom the literature of his country 
owes its origin and its revival was born in times singu- 
larly adapted to call forth his extraordinary powers. 
Religious zeal, chivalrous love and honor, democratic 
liberty, are the three most powerful principles that 
have ever influenced the character of large masses 
of men. Each of them singly has often excited the 
greatest enthusiasm, and produced the most important 
changes. In the time of Dante, all the three, often in 
amalgamation, generally in conflict, agitated the pub- 
lic mind. The preceding generation had witnessed 
the wrongs and the revenge of the brave, the accom- 
plished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederick the Second, 
— a poet in an age of schoolmen, a philosopher in 
an age of monks, a statesman in an age of crusaders. 
During the whole life of the poet, Italy was experien- 
cing the consequences of the memorable struggle which 
he had maintained against the Church. The finest 
works of imagination have always been produced in 
times of political convulsion, as the richest vineyards 
and the sweetest flowers always grow on the soil which 



12 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

has been fertilized by the fiery deluge of a volcano. 
To look no farther than the literary history of our own 
country, can we doubt that Shakspeare was, in a great 
measure, produced by the Reformation, and Words- 
worth by the French Revolution ? Poets often avoid 
political transactions : they often affect to despise them. 
But, whether they perceive it or not, they must be in- 
fluenced by them. As long as their minds have any 
point of contact with those of their fellow-men, the 
electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, 
will be circuitously communicated to them. 

This will be the case, even in large societies, where 
the division of labor enables many speculative men to 
observe the face of nature, or to analyze their own 
minds, at a distance from the seat of political transac- 
tions. In the little republic of which Dante was a 
member, the state of things was very different. These 
small communities are most unmercifully abused by 
most of our modern professors of the science of gov- 
ernment. In such states, they tell us, factions are 
always most violent ; where both parties are cooped 
up within a narrow space, political difference neces- 
sarily produces personal malignity. Every man must 
be a soldier : every moment may produce a war. No 
citizen can lie down secure that he shall not be roused 
by the alarum-bell, to repel or avenge an injury. In 
such petty quarrels, Greece squandered the blood 
which might have purchased for her the permanent 
empire of the world, and Italy wasted the energy 
and the abilities which would have enabled her to 



DANTE. 13 

defend her independence against the Pontiffs and the 
Csesars. 

All this is true, yet there is still a compensation. 
Mankind has not derived so much benefit from the 
empire of Rome as from the city of Athens, nor from 
the kingdom of France as from the city of Florence. 
The violence of party feeling may be an evil ; but it 
calls forth that activity of mind which, in some states 
of society, it is desirable to produce at any expense. 
Universal soldiership may be an evil ; but, where every 
man is a soldier, there will be no standing army. And 
is it no evil that one man in every fifty should be bred 
to the trade of slaughter? should live only by destroy- 
ing, and by exposing himself to be destroyed ? should 
fight without enthusiasm, and conquer without glory ? 
be sent to a hospital when wounded, and rot on a 
dunghill when old ? Such, over more than two-thirds 
of Europe, is the fate of soldiers. It was something 
that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not 
merely in the vague and rhetorical sense in which the 
words are often used, but in sober truth, for his par- 
ents, his children, his lands, his house, his altars. It 
was something that he marched forth to battle beneath 
the Carroccio, which had been the object of his child- 
ish veneration ; that his aged father looked down from 
the battlements on his exploits ; that his friends and 
his rivals were the witnesses of his glory. If he fell, 
he was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians. 
The same day saw him conveyed within the walls 
which he had defended. His wounds were dressed' 



14 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

by his mother; his confession was whispered to the 
friendly priest who had heard and absolved the folhes 
of his youth ; his last sigh was breathed upon the lips 
of the lady of his love. Surely, mere is no sword like 
that which is beaten out of a ploughshare. Surely, this 
state of things was not unmixedly bad : its evils were 
alleviated by enthusiasm and by tenderness ; and it 
will, at least, be acknowledged that it was well fitted 
to nurse poetical genius in an imaginative and observ- 
ant mind. 

Nor did the religious spirit of the age tend less to 
this result than its political circumstances. Fanaticism 
is an evil, but it is not the greatest of evils. It is good 
that a people should be roused by any means from a 
state of utter torpor, — that their minds should be 
diverted from objects merely sensual, to meditations, 
however erroneous, on the mysteries of the moral and 
intellectual world ; and from interests which are im- 
mediately selfish to those which relate to the past, the 
future, and the remote. These effects have some- 
times been produced by the worst superstitions that 
ever existed; but the Catholic religion, even in the 
time of its utmost extravagance and atrocity, never 
wholly lost the spirit of the Great Teacher, whose pre- 
cepts form the noblest code, as his conduct furnished 
the purest example, of moral excellence. It is of all 
religions the most poetical. The ancient superstitions 
furnished the fancy with beautiful images, but took no 
hold on the heart. The doctrines of the Reformed 
Churches have most powerfully influenced the feelings 



DANTE. 15 

and the conduct of men, but have not presented them 
with visions of sensible beauty and grandeur. The 
Roman-Cathohc Church has united to the awful doc- 
trines of the one what Mr. Coleridge calls the " fair 
humanities " of the other. It has enriched sculpture 
and painting with the loveliest and most majestic forms. 
To the Phidian Jupiter it can oppose the Moses of 
Michael Angelo ; and to the voluptuous beauty of the 
Queen of Cyprus, the serene and pensive loveliness of 
the Virgin Mother. The legends of its martyrs and 
its saints may vie in ingenuity and interest with the 
mythological fables of Greece ; its ceremonies and 
processions were the delight of the vulgar ; the huge 
fabric of secular power with which it was connected, 
attracted the admiration of the statesman. At the 
same time, it never lost sight of the most solemn and 
tremendous doctrines of Christianity, — the incarnate 
God, the judgment, the retribution, the eternity of 
happiness or torment. Thus, while, like the ancient 
religions, it received incalculable support from policy 
and ceremony, it never wholly became, like those reli- 
gions, a merely political and ceremonial institution. 

The beginning of the thirteenth century was, as 
Machiavelli has remarked, the era of a great revival 
of this extraordinary system. The policy of Innocent, 
— the growth of the Inquisition and the mendicant 
orders, — the wars against the Albigenses, the Pagans 
of the East, and the unfortunate princes of the house 
of Swabia, agitated Italy during the two following gen- 
erations. In this point, Dante was completely under 



1 6 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

the influence of his age. He was a man of a turbid 
and melancholy spirit. In early youth he had enter- 
tained a strong and unfortunate passion, which, long 
after the death of her whom he loved, continued to 
haunt him. Dissipation, ambition, misfortunes, had 
not effaced it. He was not only a sincere, but a pas- 
sionate, believer. The crimes and abuses of the 
Church of Rome were indeed loathsome to him, but 
to all its doctrines and all its rites he adhered with 
enthusiastic fondness and veneration ; and at length, 
driven from his native country, reduced to a situation 
the most painful to a man of his disposition, con- 
demned to learn by experience that no " food is so 
bitter as the bread of dependence, and no ascent so 
painful as the staircase of a patron, his wounded spirit 
took refuge in visionary devotion. Beatrice, the un- 
forgotten object of his early tenderness, was invested 
by his imagination with glorious and mysterious attri- 
butes : she was enthroned among the highest of the 
celestial hierarchy. Almighty wisdom had assigned to 
her the care of the sinful and unhappy wanderer who 
had loved her with such a perfect love.^ By a con- 
fusion, like that which often takes place in dreams, he 
has sometimes lost sight of her hum^an nature, and 
even of her personal existence, and seems to consider 
her as one of the attributes of the Deity. 

* " Tu proverai si come sa di sale 

Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle 

Lo scendere e '1 salir per 1' altrui scale." 

Paradiso, canto xvii. 

* " L' aniico niio, e non della ventura." — Inferno, canto ii. 



DANTE. 17 

But those religious hopes which had released the 
mind of the sublime enthusiast from the terrors of 
death had not rendered his speculations on human life 
more cheerful. This is an inconsistency which may 
often be observed in men of a similar temperament. 
j He hoped for happiness beyond the grave, but he felt 
j none on earth. It is from this cause, more than from 
any other, that his description of Heaven is so far in- 
ferior to the Hell or the Purgatory. With the passions 
and miseries of the suffering spirits, he feels a strong 
sympathy. But among the beatified he appears as 
one who has nothing in common with them, — as 
one who is incapable of comprehending, not only the 
degree, but the nature, of their enjoyment. We think 
that we see him standing amidst those smiling and 
radiant spirits with that scowl of unutterable misery on 
his brow, and that curl of bitter disdain on his lips, 
which all his portraits have preserved, and which might 
furnish Chantrey with hints for the head of his pro- 
jected Satan. 

' There is no poet whose intellectual and moral char- 
acter are so closely connected. The great source, as it 
appears to me, of the power of " The- Divine Comedy," 
is the strong belief with which the story seems to be 
told. In this respect, the only books which approach 
to its excellence are " Gulliver's Travels " and " Rob- 
j . Crusoe." The solemnity of his asseverations, 
consistency and minuteness of his details, the ear- 
tness with which he labors to make the reader 
derstand the exact shape and size of every thir.g 



1 8 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

that he describes, give an air of reality to his wildest 
fictions. I should only weaken this statement by quot- 
ing instances of a feeling which pervades the whole 
work, and to which it owes much of its fascination. 
This is the real justification of the many passages in his 
poem which bad critics have condemned as grotesque. 
I am concerned to see that Mr. Gary, to whom Dante 
owes more than ever poet owed to translator, has j 
sanctioned an accusation utterly unworthy of his abil- 
ities. " His solicitude," says that gentleman, " to de- 
fine all his images in such a manner as to bring them 
within the circle of our vision, and to subject them 
to the power of the pencil, renders him little better 
than grotesque, where Miltoa has since taught us to 
expect sublimity." It is true that Dante has never 
shrunk from embodying his conceptions in determinate 
words, that he has even given measures and numbers, 
where Milton would have left his images to float un- 
defined in a gorgeous haze of language. Both were 
right. Milton did not profess to have been in heaven/' 
or hell. He might, therefore, reasonably confine him 
self to magnificent generalities. Far different wa^ 
the office of the lonely traveller, who had wandered 
through the nations of the dead. Had he described 
the abode of the rejected spirits in language resem- 
bling the splendid lines of the English poet, — had he 
told us of — 

" An universe of death, which God by curse 
Created evil, for evil only good. 
Where all lile dies, death lives, and Nature breeds 



DANTE. 19 

Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things, 
] Abominable, unutterable, and worse 

I Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, 

I Gorgons, and hydras, and chimaeras dire," — 

I mis would doubtless have been noble writing. But 
•"Ivhere would have been that strong impression of 

teality, which, in accordance with his plan, it should 
lave been his great object to produce? It was ab- 
fjfeolutely necessary for him to delineate accurately 
7** all monstrous, all prodigious things," to utter what 
might to others appear " unutterable," to relate with 
the air of truth what fables had never feigned, to 
embody what fear had never conceived. And I will 
frankly confess that the vague sublimity of Milton 
affects me less than these reviled details of Dante. 
We read Milton, and we know that we are reading 
a great poet. When we read Dante, the poet van- 
ishes. We are listening to the man who has returned 
from " the valley of the dolorous abyss : " ^ we seem 
to see the dilated eye of horror, to hear the shudder- 
ing accents with which he tells his fearful tale. Con- 
sidered in this light, the narratives are exactly what 
they should be, — definite in themselves, but suggest- 
ing to the mind ideas of awful and indefinite wonder. 
They are made up of the images of the earth : they 
are told in the language of the earth. Yet the whole 
effect is, beyond expression, wild and unearthly. The 
fact is, that supernatural beings, as long as they are 
ccnsidered merely with reference to their own nature, 

* " La valle d' abisso doloroso." — In/enio, canto iv. 



20 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

excite our feelings very feebly. It is when the greaf" 
gulf which separates them from us is passed, when 
we suspect some strange and undefinable relation bef' 
tween the laws of the visible and the invisible world/ 
that they rouse, perhaps, the strongest emotions ofp 
which our nature is capable. How many children^-^ 
and how many men, are afraid of ghosts, who are not^' 
afraid of God ! And this because, though they enter-rc" 
tain a much stronger conviction of the existence of aj 
Deity than of the reality of apparitions, they have no: 
apprehension that he will manifest himself to them in^ 
any sensible manner. While this is the case, to de-^ 
scribe superhuman beings in the language, and to* 
attribute to them the actions, of humanity may be '' 
grotesque, unphilosophical, inconsistent ; but it will be ^ 
the only mode of working upon the feelings of men, 
and, therefore, the only mode suited for poetry. Shak- 
speare understood this well, as he understood every 
thing that belonged to his art. Who does not sym- 
pathize with the rapture of Ariel, flying, after sunset, 
on the wings of the bat, or sucking in the cups of 
flowers with the bee ? Who does not shudder at the 
caldron of " Macbeth " ? Where is the philosopher 
who is not moved when he thinks of the strange con- 
nection between the infernal spirits and "the sow's 
blood that hath eaten her nine farrow " ? But this 
difficult task of representing supernatural beings to 
our minds in a manner which shall be neither unin- 
telligible to our intellects, nor wholly inconsistent with " 
our ideas of their nature, has never been so well per- 



DANTE. 21 

/jformed as by Dante. I will refer to three instances, 
liwhich are, perhaps, the most striking, — the descrip- 
tion of the transformations of the serpents and the 
S^robbers, in the twenty-fifth canto of the " Inferno ; " 
jthe passage concerning Nimrod, in the thirty-first 
[.canto of the same part ; and the magnificent proces- 
ision in the twenty-ninth canto of the " Purgatorio." 
^ The metaphors and comparisons of Dante harmonize 
J admirably with that air of strong reality of which I 
<j.have spoken. They have a very peculiar character. 
i.He is, perhaps, the only poet whose writings would 
t^become much less intelligible if all illustrations of this 
•I sort were expunged. His similes are frecjuently rather 
] those of a traveller than of a poet. He employs them, 
'not to display his ingenuity by fanciful analogies, not 
jLto delight the reader by affording him a distant and 
j passing glimpse of beautiful images remote from the 
, path in which he is proceeding, but to give an exact 
L idea of the objects which he is describing, by compar- 
/ jing them with others generally known. The boiling 
f pitch in Malebolge was Hke that in the Venetian 
arsenal ; the mound on which he travelled along the 
banks of Phlegethon was like that between Ghent and 
Bruges, but not so large ; the cavities where the Si- 
moniacal prelates are confined resembled the fonts in 
the Church of John at Florence. Every reader of 
f Dante will recall many other illustrations of this de- 
scription, which add to the appearance of sincerity and 
rnestness from which the narrative derives so much 
of its interest. 



22 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

h- 
Many of his comparisons, again, are intended 

give an exact idea of his feehngs under particular ci:. 
cumstances. The dehcate shades of grief, of fear, Cy 
anger, are rarely discriminated with sufficient accuracy 
in the language of the most refined nations. A ruq 
dialect never abounds in nice distinctions of this kin(. 
Dante, therefore, employs the most accurate and ii. 
finitely the most poetical mode of marking the precis, 
state of his mind. Every person who has experience-, 
the bewildermg effect of sudden bad tidings, — tl]. 
stupefaction, the vague doubt of the truth of our ow^ 
perceptions which they produce, — will understan, 
the following simile : " I was as he is who dreamet^ 
his own harm, who, dreammg, wishes that it may \^ 
all a dream, so that he desires that which is as thoug 
it were not." This is only one out of a hundre 
equally striking and expressive similitudes. The con 
parisons of Homer and Milton are magnificent digres 
sions. It scarcely injures their effect to detach then: 
from the work. Those of Dante are very different. 
They derive their beauty from the context, and reflect 
beauty upon it. His embroidery cannot be taken out 
without spoiling the whole web. I cannot dismiss this 
part of the subject without advising every person, who 
can muster sufficient Italian, to read the simile of the 
sheep, in the third canto of the *' Purgatorio." I think 
it the most perfect passage of the kind in the world, 
the most imaginative, the most picturesque, and the, 
most sweetly expressed. 

No person can have attended to " The Divine Com- 



DANTE. 23 

jjdy " without observing how Httle impression the forms 
)f the external world appear to have made on the mind 
\)i Dante. His temper and his situation had led him 
o fix his observation almost exclusively on human na- 
ure. The exquisite opening of the eighth ' canto of 
;he " Purgatorio " affords a strong instance of this. He 
eaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky. His 
msiness is with man. To other writers, evening may 
)e the season of dews and stars and radiant clouds, 
fo Dante it is the hour of fond recollection and pas- 
-ionate devotion, — the hour which melts the heart of 
he mariner, and kindles the love of the pilgrim ; the 
lour when the toll of the bell seems to mourn for 
mother day which is gone, and will return no more. 
i The feeling of the present age has taken a direction 
lliametrically opposite. The magnificence of the phys- 
ical world, and its influence upon the human mind, 
have been the favorite themes of our most eminent 
Ipoets. The herd of blue-stocking ladies and sonnet- 
eering gentlemen seem to consider a strong sensibility 

* I cannot help observing that Gray's imitation of that noble line, 
" Che paia '1 giorno pianger che si muore," 

is one of the most striking instances of injudicious plagiarism with which 
I am acquainted. Dante did not put this strong personification at the be- 
ginning of his description. The imagination of the reader is so well pre- 
pared for it, by the previous lines, that it appears perfectly natural and 
pathetic. Placed as Gray has placed it, neither preceded nor followed by 
any thing that harmonizes with it, it becomes a frigid conceit. Woe to the 
unskilful rider who ventures on the horses of Achilles ! 

oi h' aA.e-yetj'ot 
avSpdcTL ye OvjjTOiart. 6a/t>)|u.ej/ai f]8' ox^efcrdai,, 
aW<a y' ij 'AxtAJji Tov aOavdrrf reKe fx»jTrjp. 



24 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

to the " splendor of the grass, the glory of the flower," 
as an ingredient absolutely indispensable in the forma- 
tion of a poetical mind. They treat with contempt 
all writers who are unfortunately — 

" Nee ponere lucum 
Artifices, nee rus saturum laudare." 

The orthodox poetical creed is more catholic. Thf 
noblest earthly object of the contemplation oi man ie 
man himself. The universe, and all its fair and glo' 
rious forms, are indeed included in the wide empire 
of the imagination ; but she has placed her home anc 
her sanctuary amidst the inexhaustible varieties anc 
the impenetrable mysteries of the mind. 

" In tutte parti impera, e quivi regge ; 
Quivi e la sua cittade, e 1' alto seggio." ' 

" Othello " is, perhaps, the greatest work in the world. 
From what does it derive its power? From the 
clouds? From the ocean? From the mountains? 
Or from love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the 
grave ? What is it that we go forth to see in '' Ham- 
let"? Is it a reed shaken with the wind? A small 
celandine ? A bed of daffodils ? Or is it to contem- 
plate a mighty and wayward mind laid bare before us 
to the inmost recesses ? It may, perhaps, be doubted 
whether the lakes and the hills are better fitted for the 
education of a poet than the dusky streets of a huge 
capital. Indeed, who is not tired to death with pure 

» Inferno, canto i. 



DANTE. 25 

lescription of scenery ? Is it not the fact, that external 
objects never strongly excite our feelings but when they 
ire contemplated in reference to man, as illustrating his 
destiny, or as influencing his character? The most 
beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a 
beautiful woman. But who that can analyze his feelings 
is not sensible that she owes her fascination less to 
grace of outline, and delicacy of color, than to a thou- 
sand associations, which, often unperceived by ourselves, 
connect those qualities with the source of our existence, 
With the nourishment of our infancy, with the passions 
k)f our youth, with the hopes of our age, with elegance, 
Iwith vivacity, with tenderness, with the strongest of 
Wtural instincts, with the dearest of social ties ? 
f To those who think thus, the insensibility of the 
^Florentine poet to the beauties of nature will not 
fiappear an unpardonable deficiency. On mankind, no 
•'writer, with the exception of Shakspeare, has looked 
*-with a more penetrating eye. I have said that his 
poetical character had derived a tinge from his pecul- 
iar temper. It is on the sterner and darker passions 
that he delights to dwell. All love, excepting the 
half-mystic passion which he still felt for his buried 
Beatrice, had palled on the fierce and restless exile. 
The sad story of " Rimini " is almost a single excep- 
tion. I know not whether it has been remarked, that, 
in one point, misanthropy seems to have affected his 
mind as it did that of Swift. Nauseous and revolting 
images seem to have had a fascination for his mind ; 
and he repeatedly places before his readers, with all 



26 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

the energy of his incomparable style, the most lo 
some objects of the sewer and the dissecting-room, 

There is another peculiarity in the poem of Dai 
which, I think, deserves notice. Ancient mythoL 
has hardly ever been successfully interwoven w 
modern poetry. One class of writers have introdut 
the fabulous deities merely as allegorical represe, 
lives of love, wine, or wisdom. This necessarily r 
ders their works tame and cold. We may someti,, ^ 
admire their ingenuity ; but with what interest can 
read of beings of whose personal existence the wr ' 
does not suffer us to entertain, for a moment, e>^ 
a conventional belief? Even Spenser's allegory 
scarcely tolerable, till we contrive to forget that U' 
signifies innocence, and consider her merely as .'' 
oppressed lady under the protection of a genero^ 
knight. 

Those writers who have, more judiciously, attempts 
to preserve the personality of the classical divinities ^ 
have failed from a different cause. They have bee/' es 
imitators, and imitators at a disadvantage. Euripides id 
and Catullus believed in Bacchus and Cybele as little w 
as we do. But they lived among men who did. d 
Their imaginations, if not their opinions, took the 
color of the age. Hence the glorious inspiration of 
the Bacchse and the Atys. Our minds are formed by 
circumstances, and I do not believe that it would be : 
in the power of the greatest modern poet to lash him- 
self up to a degree of enthusiasm adequate to the 
production of such works. 



DANTE. 27 

Dante alone, among the poets of later times, has 
been, in this respect, neither an allegorist nor an imi- 
tator ; and, consequently, he alone has introduced the 
ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon, 
his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be 
more beautiful or original than the use which he has 
made of the river of Lethe. He has never assigned 
to his mythological characters any functions inconsist- 
ent with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has 
related nothing concerning them which a good Chris- 
tian of that age might not beheve possible. On this 
account, there is nothing in these passages that appears 
puerile or pedantic. On the contrary, this singular 
use of classical names suggests to the mind a vague 
and awful idea of some mysterious revelation, anterior 
to all recorded history, of which the dispersed frag- 
jaients might have been retained amidst the impostures 
and superstitions of later religions. Indeed, the myth- 
\logy of " The Divine Comedy " is of the elder and 
\ore colossal mould. It breathes the spirit of Homer 
id ^schylus, not of Ovid and Claudian. 
j This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems 
/o have been utterly ignorant of the Greek language ; 
and his favorite Latin models could only have served 
to mislead him. Indeed, it is impossible not to re- 
mark his admiration of writers far inferior to himself, 
and, in particular, his idolatry of Virgil, who, ele- 
gant and splendid as he is, has no pretensions to the 
depth and originality of mind which characterize his 
Tuscan worshipper. In truth, it may be laid down, 



28 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

as an almost universal rule, that good poets are bad 
critics. Their minds are under the tyranny of ten 
thousand associations imperceptible to others. The 
worst writer may easily happen to touch a spring which 
is connected in their minds with a long succession of 
beautiful images. They are like the gigantic slaves 
of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by 
spells so mighty, that when a child whom they could 
have crushed touched a talisman, of whose secret he 
was ignorant, they immediately became his vassals. 
It has more than once happened to me to see minds, 
graceful and majestic as the Titania of Shakspeare, 
bewitched by the charms of an ass's head, bestowing 
on it the fondest caresses, and crowning it with the 
sweetest flowers. I need only mention the poems at- 
tributed to Ossian. They are utterly worthless, except 
as an edifying instance of the success of a story withJ 
out evidence, and of a book without merit. They ar'e 
a chaos of words which present no image, of imag'es 
which have no archetype. They are without form aijid 
void, and darkness is upon the face of them. Yet holw 
many men of genius have panegyrized and imitated 
them ! \^ 

The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps hisi, 
most peculiar, excellence. I know nothing with which 
it can be compared. The noblest models of Greel<: 
composition must yield to it. His words are the few^ 
est and the best which it is possible to use. The first 
expression in which he clothes his thoughts is always 
so energetic and comprehensive that amplification 



DANTE, 29 

would only injure the effect. There is probably no 
writer in any language who has presented so many 
strong pictures to the mind. Yet there is probably 
no writer equally concise. This perfection of style 
is the principal merit of the " Paradiso," which, as I 
have already remarked, is by no means equal, in other 
respects, to the two preceding parts of the poem. The 
force and felicity of the diction, however, irresistibly 
attract the reader through the theological lectures and 
the sketches of ecclesiastical biography, with which 
this division of the work too much abounds. It may 
seem almost absurd to quote particular specimens of 
an excellence which is diffused over all his hundred 
cantos. I will, however, instance the third canto of 
the "Inferno," and the sixth of the "Purgatorio," as 
passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of 
the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical : 
|nor can I recollect any thing in the great Athenian 
speeches which equals it in force of invective, and bit- 
terness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent 
statesman of the age remark, that, next to Demos- 
thenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most 
attentively studied by every man who desires to attain 
•oratorical eminence. 

But it is time to close this feeble and rambling 
critique. I cannot refrain, however, from saying a few 
words upon the translations of "The Divine Comedy." 
Boyd's is as tedious and languid as the original is rapid 
and forcible. The strange measure which he has 
chosen, and, for aught I know, invented, is most unfit 



30 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

for such a work. Translations ought never to be 
written in a verse which requires much command of 
rhyme. The stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes, 
and the thoughts of the unfortunate author are aUer- 
nately racked and curtailed to fit their new receptacle. 
The abrupt and yet consecutive style of Dante suffers 
more than that of any other poet by a version diffuse 
in style, and divided into paragraphs — for they de- 
serve no other name — of equal length. 

Nothing can be said in favor of Hayley's attempt, 
but that it is better than Boyd's. His mind was a 
tolerable specimen of filigree-work, — rather elegant, 
and very feeble. All that can be said for his best 
works is, that they are neat. All that can be said 
against his worst is, that they are stupid. He might 
have translated " Metastasio " tolerably. But he was 
utterly unable to do justice to the — 

" Rime e aspre e chiocce, 
Come si converrebbe al tristo buco." * 

I turn with pleasure from these wretched perform- 
ances to Mr. Gary's translation. It is a work whictji 
well deserves a separate discussion, and on which, ifj 
this article were not already too long, I could dwell 
with great pleasure. At present, I will only say that; 
there is no other version in the world, as far as I know, 
so faithful, yet that there is no other version which so 
fully proves that the translator is himself a man of 
poetical genius. Those who are ignorant of the Ital- 

* Inferno, canto xxxii. 



DANTE. 3 1 

ian language should read it to become acquainted 
with "The Divine Comedy." Those who are most 
intimate with Italian literature should read it for its 
original merits ; and I believe that they will find it 
difficult to determine whether the author deserves 
most praise for his intimacy with the language of 
Dante, or for his extraordinary mastery over his own. 



FRANCESCO PETRACCA, OR PETRARCH. 

This great literary genius and favorite of fortune was 
born in the year 1304, in Arezzo, where his father, an 
associate and compatriot of Dante, was an exile. By 
blood he was a Florentine. His father lost his fortune, 
and he was obliged to become a priest to secure sup- 
port. His whole life was devoted to Hterature. He 
was singularly fortunate in his friendships, and by them 
was brought into connection with the most influential 
men in church, state, and society of his day. The re- 
nowned Boccaccio, in his later life, became one of his 
most useful and devoted friends. He was crowned 
poet at Rome, with imposing ceremonies. His life 
was passed in Avignon, Bologna, Vaucluse, Parma, 
Milan, Padua ; and he died in 1 3 74, at Arqua, where 
he was found in his library with his head reclining 
upon a book — dead. He was the first great scholar 
of the Renaissance, and the originator of those great 
collections of libraries, coins, manuscripts, and monu- 
ments of antiquity, which have been of such service to 
the world. He was the repeated recipient of offer:; 
of honors in the Church, which he as repeatedly de^- 
clined, to devote himself exclusively to study anc' 
Hterature. \ 

R. S. H. . 
32 



[Knighfs Quarterly Magazine, April, 1824.] 

II. 

PETRARCH. 

Et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te, proxima myrte. 

Sic positae quoniam suaves miscetis odores. — ViRGlL. 

It would not be easy to name a \vriter whose celeb- 
rity, when both its extent and its duration are taken 
into the account, can be considered as equal to that 
of Petrarch. Four centuries and a half have elapsed 
since his death. Yet still the inhabitants of every 
nation throughout the western world are as familiar 
with his character and his adventures as with the most 
illustrious names, and the most recent anecdotes, of 
their own literary history. This is indeed a rare dis- 
tinction. His detractors must acknowledge that it 
could not have been acquired by a poet destitute of 
i;nerit. His admirers will scarcely maintain that the 
imassisted merit of Petrarch could have raised him to 
that eminence which has not yet been attained by 
Shakspeare, Milton, or Dante, — that eminence, of 
which perhaps no modern writer, excepting himself 

md Cervantes, has long retained possession, — an 

r:iuropean reputation. 

It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to 
which this great man has owed a celebrity which I 



34 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

cannot but think disproportioned to his real claims on 
the admiration of mankind. In the first place, he is 
an egotist. Egotism in conversation is universally 
abhorred. Lovers, and I believe lovers alone, pardon 
it in each other. No services, no talents, no powers 
of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude, admira- 
tion, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are con- 
demned to listen to it from indicating their disgust and 
fatigue. The childless uncle, the powerful patron, can 
scarcely extort this compliance. We leave the inside 
of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather ihan 
hear the history of our companion. The chap'ain 
bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop. The 
midshipman yawns at the table of the First Lord, "^^et, 
from whatever cause, this practice, the pest of conver- 
sation, gives to writing a zest which nothing else can 
impart. Rousseau made the boldest experiment of 
this kind, and it fully succeeded. In our own tim^;, 
Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the same nature, 
made himself the object of general interest and admi- 
ration. Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense:, 
but less obvious ; and he has been rewarded witu . . 
sect of worshippers, comparatively small in numbe_ 
but far more enthusiastic in their devotion. It is neec] • 
less to multiply instances. Even now all the walks of 
literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who 
attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the dis- 
tortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering 
from all the putrid sores of their feelings. Nor are 
there wanting many who push their imitation of the 



PETRARCH. 35 

beggars whom they resemble a step farther, and who 
find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, 
by simulating deformity and debility from which they 
are exempt, than by such honest labor as their health 
and strength enable them to perform. In the mean 
time, the credulous public pities and pampers a nui- 
sance which requires only the treadmill and the whip. 
This art, often successful when employed by dunces, 
gives irresistible fascination to works which possess 
intrinsic merit. We are always desirous to know some- 
thing of the character and situation of those whose 
writings we have perused with pleasure. The passages 
in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances 
are perhaps read more frequently, and with more inter- 
est, than any other lines in his poems. It is amusing 
to observe with what labor critics have attempted to 
glean from the poems of Homer some hints as to his 
situation and feelings. According to one hypothesis, 
he intended to describe himself under the name of 
Demodocus. Others maintain that he was the identical 
Phemius whose life Ulysses spared. This propensity 
of the human mind explains, I think, in a great degree, 
the extensive popularity of a poet whose works are 
little else than the expression of his personal feelings. 
In the second place, Petrarch was not only an ego- 
tist, but an amatory egotist. The hopes and fears, the 
joys and sorrows, which he described, were derived 
from the passion which of all passions exerts the widest 
influence, and which of all passions borrows most from 
the imagination. He had also another immense ad- 



36 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

vantage. He was the first eminent amatory poet who 
appeared after the great convulsion which had changed, 
not only the political, but the moral, state of the world. 
The Greeks, who, in their public institutions and their 
literary tastes, were diametrically opposed to the Orien- 
tal nations, bore a considerable resemblance to those 
nations in their domestic habits. Like them, they 
despised the intellects, and immured the persons, of 
their women ; and it was among the least of the fright- 
ful evils to which this pernicious system gave birth, 
that all the accomplishments of mind, and all the fas- 
cinations of manner, which, in a highly cultivated age, 
will generally be necessary to attach men to their 
female associates, were monopolized by the Phrynes 
and the Lamias. The indispensable ingredients of 
honorable and chivalrous love were nowhere to be 
found united. The matrons and their daughters, con- 
fined in the harem, — insipid, uneducated, ignorant of 
all but the mechanical arts, scarcely seen till they were 
married, — could rarely excite interest; while their 
j^rilliant rivals, half Graces, half Harpies, elegant and 
informed, but fickle and rapacious, could never inspire 
respect, ; 

The state of society in Rome was, in this point, Lar 
happier ; and the Latin literature partook of the supie- 
riority. The Roman poets have decidedly surpassed 
those of Greece in the delineation of the passion c'f 
love. There is no subject which they have treated 
with so much success. Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Hor- 
ace, and Propertius, in spite of all their faults, must be 



PETRARCH. 3/ 

allowed to rank high in this department of the art. To 
these I would add my favorite Plautus ; who, though 
he took his plots from Greece, found, I suspect, the 
originals of his enchanting female characters at Rome. 
Still, many evils remained ; and, in the decline of 
the great empire, all that was pernicious in its domestic 
institutions appeared more strongly. Under the influ- 
ence of governments at once dependent and tyrannical, 
which purchased, by cringing to their enemies, the 
power of trampling on their subjects, the Romans sunk 
into the lowest state of effeminacy and debasement. 
Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining 
degradation, formed the national character. Such a 
character is totally incompatible with the stronger pas- 
sions. Love, in particular, which, in the modern 
sense of the word, implies protection and devotion on 
the one side, confidence on the other, respect and 
fidelity on both, could not exist among the sluggish 
and heartless slaves who cringed, around the thrones of 
Honorius and Augustulus. At this period the great 
renovation commenced. The warriors of the north, 
destitute as they were of knowledge and humanity, 
brought with them, from their forests and marshes, 
those qualities without which humanity is a weakness, 
and knowledge a curse, — energy, independence, the 
dread of shame, the contempt of danger. It would 
be most interesting to examine the manner in which 
the admixture of the savage conquerors and the 
effeminate slaves, after many generations of darkness 
and agitation, produced the modern European charac- 



38 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

ter ; to trace back, from the first conflict to the final 
amalgamation, the operation of that mysterious al- 
chemy which, from hostile and worthless elements, has 
extracted the pure gold of human nature, — to analyze 
the mass, and to determine the proportions in which 
the ingredients are mingled. But I will confine myself 
to the subject to which I have more particularly re- 
ferred. The nature of the passion of love had under- 
gone a complete change. It still retained, indeed, the 
fanciful and voluptuous character which it had pos- 
sessed among the southern nations of antiquity. But 
it was tinged with the superstitious veneration with 
which the northern warriors had been accustomed to 
regard women. Devotion and war had imparted to it 
their most solemn and animating feelings. It was 
sanctified by the blessings of the Church, and deco- 
rated with the wreaths of the tournament. Venus, as 
in the ancient fable, was again rising above the dark 
and tempestuous waves which had so long covered her 
beauty. But she rose not now, as of old, in exposed 
and luxurious loveliness. She still wore the cestus of 
her ancient witchcraft ; but the diadem of Juno was 
on her brow, and the aegis of Pallas in her hand. Love 
might, in fact, be called a new passion ; and it is not 
astonishing that the first poet of eminence who wholly 
devoted his genius to this theme should have excited 
an extraordinary sensation. He may be compared to 
an adventurer who accidentally lands in a rich and 
unknown island, and who, though he may only set up 
an ill-shaped cross upon the shore, acquires possession 



PETRARCH. 39 

of its treasures, and gives it his name. The claim of 
Petrarch was indeed somewhat hke that of Amerigo 
Vespucci to the continent which should have derived 
its appellation from Columbus. The Provengal poets 
were unquestionably the masters, of the Florentine. 
But they wrote in an age which could not appreciate 
their merits, and their imitator lived at the very period 
when composition in the vernacular language began to 
attract general attention. Petrarch was in literature 
what a Valentine is in love. The public preferred him, 
not because his merits were of a transcendent order, 
but because he was the first person whom they saw 
after they awoke from their long sleep. 

Nor did Petrarch gain less by comparison with his 
immediate successors than with those who had preceded 
him. Till more than a century after his death, Italy 
produced no poet who could be compared to him. 
This decay of genius is doubtless to be ascribed, in a 
great measure, to the influence which his own works 
had exercised upon the literature of his country. Yet 
it has conduced much to his fame. Nothing is more 
favorable to the reputation of a writer than to be suc- 
ceeded by a race inferior to himself; and it is an ad- 
vantage, from obvious causes, much more frequently 
enjoyed by those who corrupt the national taste than 
by those who improve it. 

Another cause has co-operated with those which I 
have mentioned, to spread the renown of Petrarch. 
I mean the interest which is inspired by the events of 

his Hfe, — an interest which must have been stronerlv 

/ 



40 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y, 

felt by his contemporaries, since, after an interval of 
five hundred years, no critic can be wholly exem]jt 
from its influence. Among the great men to whom we 
owe the resuscitation of science, he deserves the fore- 
most place ; and his enthusiastic attachment to this 
great cause constitutes his most just and splendid title 
to the gratitude of posterity. He was the votary of 
literature. He loved it with a perfect love. He wor- 
shipped it with an almost fanatical devotion. He was 
the missionary who proclaimed its discoveries to dis- 
tant countries ; the pilgrim who travelled far and wide 
to collect its relics ; the hermit who retired to se- 
clusion to meditate on its beauties ; the champion who 
fought its battles ; the conqueror, who, in more than a 
metaphorical sense, led barbarism and ignorance in 
triumph, and received in the Capitol the laurel which 
his magnificent victory had earned. 

Nothing can be conceived more noble or affecting 
than that ceremony. The superb palaces and porticos, 
by which had rolled the ivory chariots of Marius and 
Csesar, had long mouldered into dust. The laurelled 
fasces, the golden eagles, the shouting legions, the 
captives and the pictured cities, were indeed wanting 
to his victorious procession. The sceptre had passed 
away from Rome. But she still retained the mightier 
influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to 
confer the prouder reward of an intellectual triumph. 
To the man who had extended the dominion of her 
ancient language, who had erected the trophies of 
philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance 



PETRARCH. 41 

and ferocity, whose captives were the hearts of ad- 
miring nations enchained by the influence of his song, 
whose spoils were the treasures of ancient genius 
rescued from obscurity and decay, the Eternal City 
offered the just and glorious tribute of her gratitude. 
Amidst the ruined monuments of ancient, and the 
infant erections of modern, art, he who had restored 
the broken link between the two ages of human civili- 
zation was crowned with the wreath which he had 
deserved from the moderns who owed to him their 
refinement, — from the ancients who owed to him their 
fame. Never was a coronation so august witnessed by 
Westminster or by Rheims. 

When we turn from this glorious spectacle to the 
private chamber of the poet, — when we contemplate 
the struggle of passion and virtue, — the eye dimmed, 
the cheek furrowed by the tears of sinful and hopeless 
desire, — when we reflect on the whole history of his 
attachment, from the gay fantasy of his youth to the 
lingering despair of his age, pity and affection mingle 
with our admiration. Even after death had placed the 
last seal on his misery, we see him devoting to the 
cause of the human mind all the strength and energy 
which love and sorrow had spared. He lived the 
apostle of literature, — he fell its martyr, — he was 
found dead with his head reclined on a book. 

Those who have studied the life and writings of 
Petrarch with attention, will perhaps be inclined to 
make some deductions from this panegyric. It cannot 
be denied that his merits were disfigured by a most 



42 RE A DINGS FROM MA CA ULA Y. 

unpleasant affectation. His zeal for literature com- 
municated a tinge of pedantry to all his feelings and 
opinions. His love was the love of a sonneteer : his 
patriotism was the patriotism of an antiquarian. The 
interest with which we contemplate the works, and 
study the history, of those who, in former ages, have 
occupied our country, arises from the associations which 
connect them with the community in which are com- 
prised all the objects of our affection and our hope. 
In the mind of Petrarch, these feelings were reversed. 
He loved Italy because it abounded with the monu- 
ments of the ancient masters of the world. His native 
city, — the fair and glorious Florence, — the modern 
Athens, then in all the bloom and strength of its youth, 
could not obtain, from the most distinguished of its 
citizens, any portion of that passionate homage which 
he paid to the decrepitude of Rome. These and many 
other blemishes, though they must in candor be ac- 
knowledged, can but in a very slight degree diminish 
the glory of his career. For my own part, I look upon 
it with so much fondness and. pleasure, that I feel re- 
luctant to turn from it to the consideration of his 
works, which I by no means contemplate with equal 
admiration. 

Nevertheless, I think highly of the poetical powers 
of Petrarch. He did not possess, indeed, the art of 
strongly presenting sensible objects to the imagination ; 
and this is the more remarkable, because the talent 
of which I speak is that which peculiarly distinguishes 
the Italian poets. In "The Divine Comedy" it is dis- 



PETRARCH. 43 

played in its highest perfection. It characterizes almost 
every celebrated poem in the language. Perhaps this 
is to be attributed to the circumstance, that painting 
and sculpture had attained a high degree of excellence 
in Italy before poetry had been extensively cultivated. 
Men were debarred from books, but accustomed from 
childhood to contemplate the admirable works of art, 
which, even in the thirteenth century, Italy began to 
produce. Hence their imaginations received so strong 
a bias, that, even in their writings, a taste for graphic 
delineation is discernible. The progress of things in 
England has been in all respects different. The con- 
sequence is, that English historical pictures are poems 
on canvas; while Italian poems are pictures painted 
to the mind by means of words. Of this national 
characteristic the writings of Petrarch are almost to- 
tally destitute. His sonnets, indeed, from their subject 
and nature ; and his Latin poems, from the restraints 
which always shackle one who writes in a dead lan- 
guage, — cannot fairly be received in evidence. But 
his " Triumphs " absolutely required the exercise of 
this talent, and exhibit no indications of it. 

Genius, however, he certainly possessed, and genius 
of a high order. His ardent, tender, and magnificent 
turn of thought, his brilliant fancy, his command of 
expression, at once forcible and elegant, must be ac- 
knowledged. Nature meant him for the prince of lyric 
writers. But by one fatal present she deprived her 
other gifts of half their value. He would have been 
a much greater poet had he been a less clever man. 



44 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

His ingenuity was the bane of his mind. He aban- 
doned the noble and natural style, in which he might 
have excelled, for the conceits which he produced with 
a facility at once admirable and disgusting. His muse, 
like the Roman lady in Livy, was tempted by gaudy 
ornaments to betray the fastnesses of her strength, and, 
like her, was crushed beneath the glittering bribes 
which had seduced her. 

The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable. It 
is impossible to look without amazement on a mind so 
fertile in combinations, yet so barren of images. His 
amatory poetry is wholly made up of a very few topics, 
disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in so many 
lights, that it reminds us of those arithmetical prob- 
lems about permutations, which so much astonish the 
unlearned. The French cook, who boasted that he 
could make fifteen different dishes out of a nettle-top, 
was not a greater master of his art. The mind of 
Petrarch was a kaleidoscope. At every turn, it pre- 
sents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally 
beautiful ; and we can scarcely believe that all these 
varieties have been produced by the same worthless 
fragments of glass. The sameness of his images is, 
indeed, in some degree, to be attributed to the same- 
ness of his subject. It would be unreasonable to expect 
perpetual variety from so many hundred compositions, 
all of the same length, ail in the same measure, and all 
addressed to the same insipid and heartless coquette. 
I cannot but suspect also that the perverted taste, 
which is the blemish of his amatory verses, was to be 



PETRARCH. 45 

attributed to the influence of Laura, who probably, like 
most critics of her sex, preferred a gaudy to a majes- 
tic style. Be this as it may, he no sooner changes his 
subject than be changes his manner. When he speaks 
of the wrongs and degradation of Italy, devastated by 
foreign invaders, and but feebly defended by her pusil- 
lanimous children, the effeminate lisp of the sonneteer 
is exchanged for a cry, wild and solemn, and piercing 
as that which proclaimed, " Sleep no more ! " to the 
bloody house of Cawdor. " Italy seems not to feel her 
sufferings," exclaims her impassioned poet : " decrepit, 
sluggish, and languid, will she sleep forever? Will 
there be none to awake her? Oh that I had my hands 
twisted in her hair ! " ^ 

Nor is it with less energy that he denounces against 
the Mahometan Babylon the vengeance of Europe and 
of Christ. His magnificent enumeration of the ancient 
exploits of the Greeks must always excite admiration, 
and cannot be perused without the deepest interest, at 
a time when the wise and good, bitterly disappointed 
in so many other countries, are looking with breathless 
anxiety towards the natal land of liberty, — the field 
of Marathon, — and the deadly pass where the Lion of 
Lacedsemon turned to bay.'' 



1 Che suol guai non par che senta; 
Vecchia, oziosa, e lenta. 

Dormira sempre, e non fia chi la svegli? 

Le man 1' avess' io awolte entro e capegll. — Canzone xl. 

2 Maratona, e le mortali strette 

Che difese il Leon con poca gente. — Canzone v. 



46 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY, 

His poems on religious subjects also deserve the 
highest commendation. At the head of these must be 
placed the " Ode to the Virgin." It is, perhaps, the 
finest hymn in the world. His devout veneration re- 
ceives an exquisitely poetical character from the deli- 
cate perception of the sex and the loveliness of his 
idol, which we may easily trace throughout the whole 
composition. 

I could dwell with pleasure on these and similar 
parts of the writings of Petrarch, but I must return to 
his amatory poetry : to that he intrusted his fame, and 
to that he has principally owed it. 

The prevailing defect of his best compositions on 
this subject is the universal brilliancy with which they 
are lighted up. The natural language of the passions 
is, indeed, often figurative and fantastic ; and with 
none is this more the case than with that of love. Still, 
there is a limit. The feehngs should, indeed, have their 
ornamental garb ; but, like an elegant woman, they 
should be neither muffled nor exposed. The drapery 
should be so arranged, as at once to answer the pur- 
poses of modest concealment and judicious display. 
The decorations should sometimes be employed to hide 
a defect, and sometimes to heighten a beauty, but 
never to conceal, much less to distort, the charms to 
which they are subsidiary. The love of Petrarch, on 
the contrary, arrays itself like a foppish savage, whose 
nose is bored with a golden ring, whose skin is painted 
with grotesque forms and dazzling colors, and whose 
ears are drawn down to his shoulders by the weight of 



PETRARCH. 47 

jewels. It is a rule without any exception, in all 
kinds of composition, that the principal idea, the pre- 
dominant feeling, should never be confounded with the 
accompanying decoration^. It should generally be dis- 
tinguished from them by greater simplicity of expres- 
sion ; as we recognize Napoleon in the pictures of his 
battles, amidst a crowd of embroidered coats and 
plumes, by his gray cloak and his hat without a feather. 
In the verses of Petrarch, it is generally impossible to 
say what thought is meant to be prominent. All is 
equally elaborate. The chief wears the same gorgeous 
and degrading livery with his retinue, and obtains only 
his share of the indifferent stare which we bestow upon 
them in common. The poems have no strong lights 
and shades, no background, no foreground : they are 
like the illuminated figures in an Oriental manuscript, 
— plenty of rich tints, and no perspective. Such are 
the faults of the most celebrated of these composi- 
tions. Of those which are universally acknowledged 
to be bad, it is scarcely possible to speak with patience. 
Yet they have much in common with their splendid 
companions. They differ from them as a May-day 
procession of chimney-sweepers differs from the Field 
of Cloth of Gold. They have the gaudiness, but not 
the wealth. His muse belongs to that numerous class 
of females who have no objection to be dirty, while 
they can be tawdry. When his brilliant conceits are 
exhausted, he supplies their place with metaphysical 
quibbles, forced antitheses, bad puns, and execrable 
charades. In his fifth sonnet he may, I think, be said 



48 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

to have sounded the lowest chasm of the Bathos. 
Upon the whole, that piece may be safely pronounced 
to be the worst attempt at poetry, and the worst at- 
tempt at wit, in the world. , 

A strong proof of the truth of these criticisms is, 
that almost all the sonnets produce exactly the same 
effect on the mind of the reader. They relate to all 
the various moods of a lover, from joy to despair; 
yet they are perused, as far as my experience and ob- 
servation have gone, with exactly the same feeling. 
The fact is, that in none of them are the passion and 
the ingenuity mixed in just proportions. There is not 
enough sentiment to dilute the condiments which are 
employed to season it. The repast which he sets be- 
fore us resembles the Spanish entertainment in Dry- 
den's "Mock Astrologer," at which the relish of all the 
dishes and sauces was overpowered by the common 
flavor of spice. Fish, — flesh, — fowl, — every thing at 
table tasted of nothing but red pepper. 

The writings of Petrarch may indeed suffer unde- 
servedly from one cause to which I must allude. His 
imitators 'have so much familiarized the ear of Italy 
and of Europe to the favorite topics of amorous flat- 
tery and lamentation, that we can scarcely think them 
original when we find them in the first author ; and, 
even when our understandings have convinced us that 
they were new to him, they are still old to us. This 
has been the fate of many of the finest passages of the 
most eminent writers. It is melancholy to trace a 
noble thought from stage to stage of its profanation ; 



PETRARCH. 49 

to see it transferred from the first illustrious wearer to 
his lackeys, turned, and turned again, and at last hung 
on a scarecrow. Petrarch has really suffered much 
from this cause. Yet that he should have so suffered 
is a sufficient proof that his excellences were not of 
the highest order. A line may be stolen, but the per- 
vading spirit of a great poet is not to be surreptitiously 
obtained by a plagiarist. The continued imitation of 
twenty-five centuries has left Homer as it found him. 
If every simile and every turn of Dante had been 
copied ten thousand times, " The Divine Comedy " 
would have retained all its freshness. It was easy for 
the porter in " Farquhar " to pass for Beau CHncher, 
by borrowing his lace and his pulvilio. It would have 
been more difficult to enact Sir Harry Wildair. 

Before I quit this subject, I must defend Petrarch 
from one accusation, which is in the present day fre- 
quently brought against him. His sonnets are pro- 
nounced by a large sect of critics not to possess certain 
qualities which they maintain to be indispensable to 
sonnets, with as much confidence, and as much reason, 
as their protot}^pe3 of old insisted on the unities of the 
drama. I am an exoteric — utterly unable to explain 
the mysteries of this new poetical faith. I only know 
that it is a faith, which except a man do keep pure and 
undefiled, without doubt he shall be called a block- 
head. I cannot, however, refrain from asking what is 
the particular virtue which belongs to fourteen as dis- 
tinguished from all other numbers. Does it arise from 
its being a multiple of seven ? Has this principle any 



50 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

reference to the sabbatical ordinance ? Or is it to the 
order of rhymes that these singular properties are 
attached? Unhappily the sonnets of Shakspeare differ 
as much in this respect from those of Petrarch, as from 
a Spenserian or an octave stanza. Away with this un- 
meaning jargon ! We have pulled down the old regime 
of criticism. I trust that we shall never tolerate the 
equally pedantic and irrational despotism which some 
of the revolutionary leaders would erect upon its ruins. 
We have not dethroned Aristotle and Bossu for this. 

These sonnet-fanciers would do well to reflect, that, 
though the style of Petrarch may not suit the standard 
of perfection which they have chosen, they lie under 
great obligations to these very poems, — that, but for 
Petrarch, the measure, concerning which they legislate 
so judiciously, would probably never have attracted 
notice ; and that to him they owe the pleasure of 
admiring, and the glory of composing, pieces, which 
seem to have been produced by Master Slender, with 
the assistance of his man Simple. 

I cannot conclude these remarks without making a 
few observations on the Latin writings of Petrarch. It 
appears, that, both by himself and by his contempora- 
ries, these were far more highly valued than his com- 
positions in the vernacular language. Posterity, the 
supreme court of literary appeal, has not only reversed 
the judgment, but, according to its general practice, 
reversed it with costs, and condemned the unfortunate 
works to pay, not only for their own inferiority, but 
also for the injustice of those who had given them an 



PETRARCH, 51 

Linmerited preference. And it must be owned, that, 
without making large allowances for the circumstances 
under which they were produced, we cannot pronounce 
a very favorable judgment. They must be considered 
as exotics, transplanted to a foreign climate, and reared 
in an unfavorable situation ; and it would be unreason- 
able to expect from them the health and the vigor 
which we find in the indigenous plants around them, 
or which they might themselves have possessed in their 
native soil. He has but very imperfectly imitated the 
style of the Latin authors, and has not compensated 
for the deficiency by enriching the ancient language 
with the graces of modern poetry. The splendor and 
ingenuity, which we admire, even when we condemn 
it, in his Italian works, is almost totally wanting, and 
only illuminates with rare and occasional glimpses the 
dreary obscurity of the " Africa." The eclogues have 
more animation, but they can only be called poems 
by courtesy. They have nothing in common with his 
writings in his native language, except the eternal pun 
about Laura and Daphne. None of these works would 
have placed him on a level with Vida or Buchanan. 
Yet when we compare him with those who preceded 
him, when we consider that he went on the forlorn 
hope of literature, that he was the first who perceived, 
and the first who attempted to revive, the finer elegan- 
cies of the ancient language of the world, we shall, 
perhaps, think more highly of him than of those who 
could never have surpassed his beauties if they had 
not inherited them. 



52 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

He has aspired to emulate the philosophical elo- 
quence of Cicero, as well as the poetical majesty of 
Virgil. His essay on the " Remedies of Good and Evil 
Fortune " is a singular work in a colloquial form and a 
most scholastic style. It seems to be framed upon the 
model of the "Tusculan Questions," — with what suc- 
cess those who have read it may easily determine. It 
consists of a series of dialogues : in each of these a 
person is introduced who has experienced some happy 
or some adverse event ; he gravely states his case, and a 
reasoner, or rather Reason personified, confutes him, — 
a task not very difficult, since the disciple defends his 
position only by pertinaciously repeating it, in almost 
the same words, at the end of every argument of his 
antagonist. In this manner Petrarch solves an immense 
variety of cases. Indeed, I doubt whether it would be 
possible to name any pleasure or any calamity which 
does not find a place in this dissertation. He gives 
excellent advice to a man who is in expectation of dis- 
covering the philosopher's stone ; to another, who has 
formed a fine aviary ; to a third, who is delighted with 
the tricks of a favorite monkey. His lectures to the 
unfortunate are equally singular. He seems to imagine 
that a precedent in point is a sufficient consolation for 
every form of suffering. " Our town is taken," says 
one complainant. " So was Troy," replies his com- 
forter. *' My wife has eloped," says another. " If it 
has happened to you once, it happened to Menelaus 
twice." One poor fellow is in great distress at having 
discovered that his wife's son is none of his. " It is 



PETRARCH. 53 

hard," says he, " that I should have had the expense 
of bringing up one who is indifferent to me." — "You 
are a man," returns his monitor, quoting the famous 
Hne of Terence ; " and nothing that belongs to any- 
other man ought to be indifferent to you." The physi- 
cal calamities of life are not omitted ; and there is in 
particular a disquisition on the advantages of having 
the itch, which, if not convincing, is certainly very 
amusing. 

The invectives upon an unfortunate physician, or 
rather, upon the medical science, have more spirit. 
Petrarch was thoroughly in earnest on this subject. 
And the bitterness of his feelings occasionally produces, 
in the midst of his classical and scholastic pedantry, a 
sentence worthy of the second Philippic. Swift him- 
self might have envied the chapter on the causes of 
the paleness of physicians. 

Of his Latin works, the " Epistles " are the most gen- 
erally known and admired. As compositions they are 
certainly superior to his essays. But their excellence 
is only comparative. From so large a collection of 
letters, written by so eminent a man, during so varied 
and eventful a life, we should have expected a com- 
plete and spirited view of the literature, the manners, 
and the politics of the age. A traveller, a poet, a 
scholar, a lover, a courtier, a recluse, he might have 
perpetuated, in an imperishable record, the form and 
pressure of the age and body of the time. Those who 
read his correspondence, in the hope of finding such 
information as this, will be utterly disappointed. It 



54 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

contains nothing characteristic of the period or of the 
individual. It is a series, not of letters, but of themes, 
and, as it is not generally known, might be very safely 
employed at public schools as a magazine of common- 
places. Whether he write on politics to the Emperor 
and the Doge, or send advice and consolation to a pri- 
vate friend, every line is crowded with examples and 
quotations, and sounds big with Anaxagoras and Scipio. 
Such was the interest excited by the character of Pe- 
trarch, and such the admiration which was felt for his 
epistolary style, that it was with difficulty that his let- 
ters reached the place of their destination. The poet 
describes, with pretended regret and real complacency, 
the importunity of the curious, who often opened, and 
sometimes stole, these favorite compositions. It is a re- 
markable fact, that, of all his epistles, the least affected 
are those which are addressed to the dead and the 
unborn. Nothing can be more absurd than his whim 
of composing grave letters of expostulation and com- 
mendation to Cicero and Seneca, yet these strange 
performances are written in a far more natural manner 
than his communications to his living correspondents. 
But, of all his Latin works, the preference must be 
given to the " Epistle to Posterity," a simple, noble, 
and pathetic composition, most honorable both to his 
taste and his heart. If we can make allowance for 
some of the affected humility of an author, we shall, 
perhaps, think that no literary man has left a more 
pleasing memorial of himself. 

In conclusion, we may pronounce that the works of 



PETRARCH. 55 

Petrarch were below both his genius and his celebrity, 
and that the circumstances under which he wrote were 
as adverse to the development of his powers as they 
were favorable to the extension of his fame. 



NICOLO MACHIAVELLI. 

The subject of the following essay by Lord Macau- 
lay was bom in Florence of noble ancestry in May, 
1469. His father was a jurist of some note, and fur- 
nished his son with the best facilities for education. 
At the early age of twenty-five years Nicolo Machia- 
velli entered public life in the diplomatic service of 
his country, and for eighteen years was a very promi- 
nent figure in Florentine politics. With the accession 
to power of the Medici he was deprived of office, 
exiled, arrested, imprisoned, racked, and not released 
till Giovanni de Medici became pope. He then re- 
tired to the country, where, in the remaining years of 
his life, he produced the literary works which have 
made his name immortal. He accomplished his own 
restoration to favor with the ruling family, but was 
never again a prominent factor in pohtical hfe. He 
died in 1527, aged fifty-eight years. 

R. S. H. 
56 



[Edinburgh Review^ March, 1827.] 
III. 

MACHIAVELLI.i 

Those who have attended to this practice of our 
literary tribunal are well aware, that, by means of cer- 
tain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster Hall, 
we are frequently enabled to take cognizance of cases 
lying beyond the sphere of our original jurisdictiont 
We need hardly say, therefore, that, in the presen. 
instance, M. Perier is merely a Richard Roe, who will 
not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the pro- 
ceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose 
of bringing Machiavelli into court. 

We doubt whether any name in literary history be 
so generally odious as that of the man whose character 
and writings we now propose to consider. The terms 
in which he is commonly described would seem to im- 
port that he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the 
discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original in- 
ventor of perjury, and that, before the publication of 
his fatal " Prince," there had never been a hypocrite, a 
tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient 
crime. One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of 

* (Euvres completes de Machiavel, tradtdtes par J. V, Perier. Paris, 
1825. 

57 



58 READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy from that 
execrable volume. Another remarks, that, since it was 
translated into Turkish, the Sultans have been more 
addicted than formerly to the custom of strangling 
their brothers. Lord Lyttelton charges the poor Flor- 
entine with the manifold treasons of the house of 
Guise, and with the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
Several authors have hinted that the Gunpowder Plot 
is to be primarily attributed to his doctrines, and seem 
to think that his effigy ought to be substituted for that 
of Guy Faux, in those processions by which the ingen- 
ious youth of England annually commemorate the 
preservation of the Three Estates. The Church of 
Rome has pronounced his works accursed things. 
Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testi- 
fying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname 
they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of 
his Christian name a synonyme for the Devil.^ 

It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not 
well acquainted with the history and literature of Italy, 
to read without horror and amazement the celebrated 
treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the 
name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, 
naked yet not ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific 
atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to 
the most depraved of men. Principles which the most 



I Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick, 
Tho' he gave his name to our old Nick. 

Htidibras, Part III., Canto I. 
But we believe there is a schism on this subject among the antiquarians. 



MACHIAVELLI. 59 

hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted 
accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some 
palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed 
without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as 
the fundamental axioms of all political science. 

It is not strange that ordinary readers should regard 
the author of such a book as the most depraved and 
shameless of human beings. Wise men, however, 
have always been inclined to look with great suspicion 
on the angels and daemons of the multitude ; and, in 
the present instance, several circumstances have led 
even superficial obseivers to question the justice of 
the vulgar decision. It is notorious that Machiavelli 
was, through life, a zealous republican. In the same 
year in which he composed his manual of " King-craft," 
he suffered imprisonment and torture in the cause of 
public liberty. It seems inconceivable that the martyr 
of freedom should have designedly acted as the apostle 
of tyranny. Several eminent writers have, therefore, 
endeavored to detect in this unfortunate performance 
some concealed meaning, more consistent with the 
character and conduct of the author than that which 
appears at the first glance. 

One hypothesis is, that Machiavelh intended to prac- 
tise on the young Lorenzo de Medici a fraud similar 
to that which Sunderland is said to have employed 
against our James the Second, and that he urged his 
pupil to violent and perfidious measures, as the surest 
means of accelerating the moment of deliverance and 
revenge. Another supposition, which Lord Bacon 



6o READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

seems to countenance, is that the treatise was merely 
a piece of grave irony, intended to warn nations 
against the arts of ambitious men. It would be easy 
to show that neither of these solutions is consistent 
with many passages in "The Prince" itself. But the 
most decisive refutation is that which is furnished by 
the other works of Machiavelli. In all the writings 
which he gave to the public, and in all those which 
the research of editors has, in the course of three 
centuries, discovered ; in his Comedies, designed for 
the entertainment of the multitude ; in his " Comments 
on Livy," intended for the perusal of the most enthu- 
siastic patriots of Florence ; in his history, inscribed to 
one of the most amiable and estimable of the Popes ; 
in his public despatches ; in his private memoranda, — 
the same obliquity of moral principle for which " The 
Prince "is so severely censured is more or less dis- 
cernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to 
find, in all the many volumes of his compositions, a 
single expression indicating that dissimulation and 
treachery had ever struck him as discreditable. 

After this, it may seem ridiculous to say that we are 
acquainted with few writings which exhibit so much 
elevation of sentiment, so pure and warm a zeal for 
the pubhc good, or so just a view of the duties and 
rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it 
is. And even from "The Prince" itself we could 
select many passages in support of this remark. To a 
reader of our age and country, this inconsistency is, at 
first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to 



MACHIAVELLL 6 1 

be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongmous 
qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and be- 
nevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villany and 
romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran 
diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the 
direction of his most confidential spy : the next seems 
to be extracted from a theme composed by an ardent 
schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dex- 
terous perfidy and an act of patriotic self-devotion 
call forth the same kind and the same degree of 
respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the 
writer seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and mor- 
bidly acute. Two characters altogether dissimilar are 
united in him. They are not merely joined, but inter- 
woven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind ; 
and their combination, like that of the variegated 
threads in shot silk, gives to the whole texture a glan- 
cing and ever- changing appearance. The explanation 
might have been easy if he had been a very weak or 
a very affected man. But he was evidently neither 
the one nor the other. His works prove, beyond all 
contradiction, that his understanding was strong, his 
taste pure, and his sense of the ridiculous exquisitely 
keen. 

This is strange, and yet the strangest is behind. 
There is no reason whatever to think that those 
amongst whom he lived saw any thing shocking or 
incongruous in his writings. Abundant proofs remain 
of the high estimation in which both his works and 
his person were held by the most respectable among 



62 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

his contemporaries. Clement the Seventh patronized 
the pubhcation of those very books which the Council 
of Trent, in the following generation, pronounced unfit 
for the perusal of Christians. Some members of the 
democratical party censured the secretary for dedi- 
cating " The Prince " to a patron who bore the 
unpopular name of Medici. But, to those immoral 
doctrines which have since called forth such severe 
reprehensions, no exception appears to have been 
taken. The cry against them was first raised beyond 
the Alps, and seems to have been heard with amaze- 
ment in Italy. The earliest assailant, as far as we are 
aware, was a countryman of our own. Cardinal Pole. 
The author of the " Anti-Machiavelli " was a French 
Protestant. 

It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among 
the Italians of those times that we must seek for the 
real explanation of what seems most mysterious in the 
life and writings of this remarkable man. As this is a 
subject which suggests many interesting considerations, 
both political and metaphysical, we shall make no 
apology for discussing it at some length. 

During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which 
followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, Italy had 
preserved, in a far greater degree than any other part 
of Western Europe, the traces of ancient civilization. 
The night which descended upon her was the night of 
an Arctic summer. The dawn began to re-appear 
before the last reflection of the preceding sunset had 
faded from the horizon. It was in the time of the 



MA CHI A VELLI. 63 

French Merovingians and of the Saxon Heptarchy 
that ignorance and ferocity seemed to have done their 
worst. Yet even then the Neapohtan provinces, 
recognizing the authority of the Eastern Empire, 
preserved something of Eastern knowledge and refine- 
ment. Rome, protected by the sacred character of 
her pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security and 
repose. Even" in those regions where the sanguinary 
Lombards had fixed their monarchy, there was incom- 
parably more of wealth, of information, of physical 
comfort, and of social order, than could be found in 
Gaul, Britain, or Germany. 

That which most distinguished Italy from the neigh- 
boring countries was the importance which the popu- 
lation of the towns, at a very early period, began to 
acquire. Some cities had been founded in wild and 
remote situations, by fugitives who had escaped from 
the rage of the barbarians. Such were Venice and 
Genoa, which preserved their freedom by their ob- 
scurity, till they became able to preserve it by their 
power. Other cities seem to have retained, under all 
the changing dynasties of invaders, under Odoacer 
and Theodoric, Narses and Alboin, the municipal in- 
stitutions which had been conferred on them by the 
liberal policy of the Great Republic. In provinces 
which the central government was too feeble either to 
protect or to oppress, these institutions gradually ac- 
quired stability and vigor. The citizens, defended by 
their walls, and governed by their o^^^l magistrates and 
their own by-laws, enjoyed a considerable share of 



64 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

republican independence. Thus a strong democratic 
spirit was called into action. The Carlovingian sover- 
eigns were too imbecile to subdue it. The generous 
policy of Otho encouraged it. It might perhaps have 
been suppressed by a close coalition between the 
Church and the Empire. It was fostered and invigo- 
rated by their disputes. In the twelfth century it 
attained its full vigor, and, after a long and doubtful 
conflict, triumphed over the abihties and courage of 
the Swabian Princes. 

The assistance of the Ecclesiastical power had 
greatly contributed to the success of the Guelfs. That 
success would, however, have been a doubtful good, if 
its only effect had been to substitute a moral for a po- 
litical servitude, and to exalt the Popes at the expense 
of the Caesars. Happily the public mind of Italy had 
long contained the seeds of free opinions, which were 
now rapidly developed by the genial influence of free 
institutions. The people of that country had observed 
the whole machinery of the Church, its saints and its 
miracles, its lofty pretensions and its splendid ceremo- 
nial, its worthless blessings and its harmless curses, too 
long and too closely to be duped. They stood behind 
the scenes on which others were gazing with childish 
awe and interest. They witnessed the arrangement 
of the pulleys and the manufacture of the thunders. 
They saw the natural faces, and heard the natural 
voices, of the actors. Distant nations looked on the 
Pope as the vicegerent of the Almighty, the oracle of 
the All-Wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the 



MACHIAVELLI. 65 

disputes either of theologians or of kings, no Christian 
ought to appeal. The Italians were acquainted with 
all the follies of his youth, and with all the dishonest 
arts by which he had attained power. They knew how 
often he had employed the keys of the Church to re- 
lease himself from the most sacred engagements, and 
its wealth to pamper his mistresses and nephews. 
The doctrines and rites of the established religion they 
treated with decent reverence. But, though they still 
called themselves Catholics, they had ceased to be 
Papists. Those spiritual arms which carried terror into 
the palaces and camps of the proudest sovereigns, ex- 
cited only contempt in the immediate neighborhood 
of the Vatican. Alexander, when he commanded our 
Henry the Second to submit to the lash before the 
tomb of a rebellious subject, was himself an exile. 
The Romans, apprehending that he entertained de- 
signs against their liberties, had driven him from their 
city ; and, though he solemnly promised to confine 
himself for the future to his spiritual functions, they 
still refused to re-admit him. 

In every other part of Europe, a large and powerful 
privileged class trampled on the people, and defied the 
government. But, in the most flourishing parts of 
Italy, the feudal nobles were reduced to comparative 
insignificance. In some districts, they took shelter 
under the protection of the powerful commonwealths 
which they were unable to oppose, and gradually sank 
into the mass of burghers. In other places, they 
possessed great influence ; but it was an influence 



66 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

widely different from that which was exercised by the 
aristocracy of any transalpine kingdom. They were 
not petty princes, but eminent citizens. Instead of 
strengthening their fastnesses among the mountains, 
they embellished their palaces in the market-place. 
The state of society in the Neapolitan dominions, and 
in some parts of the Ecclesiastical State, more nearly 
resembled that which existed in the great monarchies 
of Europe. But the governments of Lombardy and 
Tuscany, through all their revolutions, preserved a 
different character. A people, when assembled in 
a town, is far more formidable to its rulers than when 
dispersed over a wide extent of country. The most 
arbitrary of the Caesars found it necessary to feed and 
divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the 
expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid 
have more than once besieged their sovereign in his 
own palace, and extorted from him the most humiliat- 
ing concessions. The Sultans have often been com- 
pelled to propitiate the furious rabble of Constantinople 
with the head of an unpopular vizier. From the same 
cause, there was a certain tinge of democracy in the 
monarchies and aristocracies of Northern -Italy. 

Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, re- 
visited Italy; and with liberty came commerce and 
empire, science and taste, all the comforts and all the 
ornaments of life. The Crusades, from which the in- 
habitants of other countries gained nothing but relics 
and wounds, brought to the rising commonwealths of 
the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas a large increase of 



MACHIAVELLI. 6/ 

wealth, dominion, and knowledge. The moral and 
the geographical position of those commonwealths 
enabled them to profit ahke by the barbarism of the 
West and by the civilization of the East. ItaHan ships 
covered every sea. Italian factories rose on every 
shore. The tables of Italian money-changers were set 
in every city. Manufactures flourished. Banks were 
established. The operations of the commercial ma- 
chine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful in- 
ventions. We doubt whether any country of Europe, 
our own excepted, have at the present time reached so 
high a point of wealth and civilization as some parts of 
Italy had attained four hundred years ago. Historians 
rarely descend to those details from which alone the 
real state of a community can be collected. Hence 
posterity is too often deceived by the vague hyperboles 
of poets and rhetoricians, who mistake the splendor 
of a court for the happiness of a people. Fortunately, 
John Villani has given us an ample and precise ac- 
count of the state of Florence in the early part of the 
fourteenth century. The revenue of the Republic 
amounted to three hundred thousand florins, a sum 
which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious 
metals, was at least equivalent to six hundred thousand 
pounds sterhng, — a larger sum than England and Ire- 
land, two centuries ago, yielded annually to Elizabeth. 
The manufacture of wool alone employed two hundred 
factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth 
annually produced sold, at an average, for twelve hun- 
dred thousand florins, — a sum fully equal, in exchange- 



6S READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

able value, to two millions and a half of our money. 
Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. 
Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations, 
not of Florence only, but of all Europe. The trans- 
actions of these establishments were sometimes of a 
magnitude which may surprise even the contempora- 
ries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses 
advanced to Edward the Third of England upwards of 
three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the 
mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of the 
present day, and when the value of silver was more 
than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its 
environs contained a hundred and seventy thousand 
inhabitants. In the various schools about ten thou- 
sand children were taught to read, twelve hundred 
studied arithmetic, six hundred received a learned 
education. 

The progress of elegant literature and of the fine 
arts was proportioned to that of the public prosperity. 
Under the despotic successors of Augustus, all the fields 
of the intellect had been turned into arid wastes, still 
marked out by formal boundaries, still retaining the 
traces of old cultivation, but yielding neither flowers 
nor fruit. The deluge of barbarism came. It swept 
away all the landmarks. It obliterated all the signs of 
former tillage. But it fertilized while it devastated. 
When it receded, the wilderness was as the garden of 
God, rejoicing on every side, laughing, clapping its 
hands, pouring forth, in spontaneous abundance, every 
thing brilliant or fragrant or nourishing. A new Ian- 



MA CHI A VELLL 69 

guage, characterized by simple sweetness and simple 
energy, had attained perfection. No tongue ever fur- 
nished more gorgeous and vivid tints to poetry ; nor 
was it long before a poet appeared, who knew how to 
employ them. Early in the fourteenth century came 
forth " The Divine Comedy," beyond comparison the 
greatest work of imagination which had appeared since 
the poems of Homer. The following generation pro- 
duced indeed no second Dante, but it was eminently 
distinguished by general intellectual activity. The 
study of the Latin writers had never been wholly 
neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced a more 
profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship, had com- 
municated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the 
literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, 
which divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and 
a more frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention 
to the more sublime and graceful models of Greece. 

From this time, the admiration of learning and 
genius became almost an idolatry among the people of 
Italy. Kings and republics, cardinals and doges, vied 
with each other in honoring and flattering Petrarch. 
Embassies from rival states soHcited the honor of his 
instructions. His coronation agitated the Court of 
Naples and the people of Rome as much as the most 
important political transaction could have done. To 
collect books and antiques, to found professorships, to 
patronize men of learning, became almost universal 
fashions among the great. The spirit of literary re- 
search allied itself to that of commercial enterprise. 



70 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

Every place to which the merchant princes of Florence 
extended their gigantic traffic, from the bazars of the 
Tigris to the monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked 
for medals and manuscripts. ■ Architecture, painting, 
and sculpture were munificently encouraged. Indeed, 
it would be difficult to name an Italian of eminence, 
during the period of which we speak, who, whatever 
may have been his general character, did not at least 
affect a love of letters and of the arts. 

Knowledge and public prosperity continued to ad- 
vance together. Both attained their meridian in the 
age of Lorenzo the Magnificent. We cannot refrain 
from quoting the splendid passage in which the Tus- 
can Thucydides describes the state of Italy at that 
period. " Ridotta tutta in somma pace e tranquillita, 
coltivata non meno ne' luoghi piu montuosi e piu steriH 
che nelle pianure e regioni piu fertili, ne sottoposta ad 
altro imperio che de' suoi medesimi, non solo era ab- 
bondantissima d' abitatori e di ricchezze ; ma illustrata 
sommamente dalla magnificenza di molti principi, dallo 
splendore di molte nobilissime e bellissime citta, dalla 
sedia e maesta della religione, fioriva d' uomini pres- 
tantissimi nell' amministrazione delle cose pubbliche, 
e d' ingegni molto nobili in tutte le scienze, ed in qua- 
lunque arte preclara ed industriosa." When we peruse 
this just and splendid description, we can scarcely per- 
suade ourselves that we are reading of times in which 
the annals of England and France present us only with 
a frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity, and igno- 
rance. From the oppressions of illiterate masters, and 



MA CHI A VELLL 7 1 

the sufferings of a degraded peasantry, it is delightful 
to turn to the opulent and enlightened States of Italy, 
to the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the ar- 
senals, the villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts 
filled with every article of comfort or luxury, the fac- 
tories swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered 
with rich cultivation up to their very summits, the Po 
wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries of 
Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the 
furs of Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar 
pleasure, every cultivated mind must repose on the fair, 
the happy, the glorious Florence, the halls which rang 
with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled the 
midnight lamp of Pohtian, the statues on which the 
young eye of Michael Angelo glared with the frenzy 
of a kindred inspiration, the gardens in which Lorenzo 
meditated some sparkling song for the May-day dance 
of the Etrurian virgins. Alas for the beautiful city ! 
Alas for the wit and the learning, the genius and the 

love ! 

" Le donne, e i cavalier, gli affanni, e gli agi, 
Che ne 'nvogliava amore e cortesia 
O dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi." 

A time was at hand when all the seven vials of the 
Apocalypse were to be poured forth and shaken out 
over those pleasant countries, — a time of slaughter, 
famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, despair. 

In the Italian States, as in many natural bodies, un- 
timely decrepitude was the penalty of precocious ma- 
turity. Their early greatness, and their early decline, 



/J READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

are prij^cipally to be attributed to the same cause, — 
the preponderance which the towns acquired in the 
political system. 

In a community of hunters or of shepherds, every 
man easily and necessarily becomes a soldier. His 
ordinary avocations are perfectly compatible with all 
the duties of military service. However remote may 
be the expedition on which he is bound, he finds it 
easy to transport with him the stock from which he 
derives his subsistence. The whole people is an army, 
the whole year a march. Such was the state of society 
which facihtated the gigantic conquests of Attila and 
Tamerlane. 

But a people which subsists by the cultivation of 
the earth is in a very different situation. The hus- 
bandman is bound to the soil on which he labors. A 
long campaign would be ruinous to him. Sdll, his pur- 
suits are such as give to his frame both the active and 
the passive strength necessary to a soldier. Nor do 
they, at least in the infancy of agricultural science, 
demand his uninterrupted attention. At particular 
times of the year he is almost wholly unemployed, and 
can, without injury to himself, afford the time neces- 
sary for a short expedition. Thus the legions of Rome 
were supplied during its earlier wars. The season 
during which the fields did not require the presence 
of the cultivators sufficed for a short inroad and a bat- 
tle. These operations, too frequently interrupted to 
produce decisive results, yet served to keep up among 
the people a degree of discipline and courage which 



MACHIAVELLI. 

75 

rendered them not only secure but formidable. , 

.^rd or 
archers and billmen of the Middle Ages, who, ' 

'*3.ra- 
provisions for forty days at their backs, left the fiei 

for the camp, were troops of the same description. 

But when commerce and manufactures begin to 
flourish, a great change takes place. The sedentary 
habits of the desk and the loom render the exertions 
and hardships of war insupportable. The business of 
traders and artisans requires their constant presence 
and attention. In such a community, there is little 
superfluous time ; but there is generally much super- 
fluous money. Some members of the society are, 
therefore, hired to reheve the rest from a task incon- 
sistent with their habits and engagements. 

The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other 
respects, the best commentary on the history of Italy. 
Five hundred years before the Christian era, the citi- 
zens of the republics round the ^gean Sea formed 
perhaps the finest militia that ever existed. As wealth 
and refinement advanced, the system underwent a 
gradual alteration. The Ionian States were the first 
in which commerce and the arts were cultivated, and 
the first in which the ancient discipline decayed. 
Within eighty years after the battle of Plataea, merce- 
nary troops were everywhere plying for battles and 
sieges. In the time of Demosthenes, it was scarcely 
possible to persuade or compel the Athenians to enlist 
for foreign service. The laws of Lycurgus prohibited 
trade and manufactures. The Spartans, therefore, 
continued to form a national force long after their 



^j P READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY, 

are prhibors had begun to hire soldiers. But their mili- 
the ^y spirit dechned with their singular institutions. In 
prthe second century before Christ, Greece contained 
only one nation of warriors, the savage highlanders of 
^tolia, who were some generations behind their coun- 
trymen in civilization and intelligence. 

All the causes which produced these effects among 
the Greeks acted still more strongly on the modern 
Italians. Instead of a power like Sparta, in its nature 
warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state, 
in its nature pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, 
every freeman is induced by the strongest motives to 
familiarize himself with the use of arms. The com- 
monwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, 
swarm with thousands of these household enemies. 
Lastly, the mode in which military operations were 
conducted during the prosperous times of Italy was 
peculiarly unfavorable to the formation of an efficient 
militia. Men covered with iron from head to foot, 
armed with ponderous lances, and mounted on horses 
of the largest breed, were considered as composing 
the strength of an army. The infantry was regarded 
as comparatively worthless, and was neglected till it 
became really so. These tactics maintained their 
ground for centuries in most parts of Europe. That 
foot-soldiers could withstand the charge of heavy cav- 
alry was thought utterly impossible, till, towards the 
close of the fifteenth century, the rude mountaineers 
of Switzerland dissolved the spell, and astounded the 
most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded 
shock on an impenetrable forest of pikes. 



MA CHI A VELLI. 75 

The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman sword, or 
the modern bayonet, might be acquired with compara- 
tive ease. But nothing short of the daily exercise of 
years could train the man at arms to support his pon- 
derous panoply, and manage his unwieldy weapon. 
Throughout Europe this most important branch of war 
became a separate profession. Beyond the Alps, in- 
deed, though a profession, it was not generally a trade. 
It was the duty and the amusement of a large class of 
country gentlemen. It was the ser\dce by which they 
held their lands, and the diversion by which, in the 
absence of mental resources, they beguiled their leis- 
ure. But in the Northern States of Italy, as we have 
already remarked, the growing power of the cities, 
where it had not exterminated this order of men, had 
completely changed their habits. Here, therefore, the 
practice of employing mercenaries became universal, 
at a time when it was almost unknown in other coun- 
tries. 

When war becomes the trade of a separate class, the 
least dangerous course left to a government is to form 
that class into a standing army. It is scarcely possi- 
ble that men can pass their lives in the service of one 
state, without feeling some interest in its greatness. 
Its victories are their victories. Its defeats are their 
defeats. The contract loses something of its mercan- 
tile character. The services of the soldier are consid- 
ered as the effects of patriotic zeal, his pay as the 
tribute of national gratitude. To betray the power 
which employs him, to be even remiss in its service, 



76 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

are in his eyes the most atrocious and degrading of 
crimes. 

When the princes and commonweahhs of Italy 
began to use hired troops, their wisest course would 
have been to form separate military establishments. 
Unhappily this was not done. The mercenary war- 
riors of the Peninsula, instead of being attached to 
the service of different powers, were regarded as the 
common property of all. The connection between the 
state and its defenders was reduced to the most simple 
and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, 
his weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the 
market. Whether the King of Naples or the Duke of 
Milan, the Pope or the Signory of Florence, struck 
the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indiffer- 
ence. He was for the highest wages and the longest 
term. When the campaign for which he had con- 
tracted was finished, there was neither law nor punc- 
tilio to prevent him from instantly turning his arms 
against his late masters. The soldier was altogether 
disjoined from the citizen and from the subject. 

The natural consequences followed. Left to the 
conduct of men who neither loved those whom they 
defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who 
were often bound by stronger ties to the army against 
which they fought than to the state which they served, 
who lost by the termination of the conflict, and gained 
by its prolongation, war completely changed its char- 
acter. Every man came into the field of battle im- 
pressed v/ith the knowledge, that, in a few days, he 



MA CHI A VELLI. 77 

might be taking the pay of the power against which 
he was then employed, and fighting by the side of his 
enemies against his associates. The strongest interests 
and the strongest feehngs concurred to mitigate the 
hostihty of those who had lately been brethren in arms, 
and who might soon be brethren in arms once more. 
Their common profession was a bond of union not to 
be forgotten, even when they were engaged in the ser- 
vice of contending parties. Hence it was that opera- 
tions, languid and indecisive beyond any recorded in 
history, marches and countermarches, pillaging expe- 
ditions and blockades, bloodless capitulations and 
equally bloodless combats, make up the military his- 
tory of Italy during the course of nearly two centuries. 
Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A great 
victory is won. Thousands of prisoners are taken, 
and hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to 
have been really less dangerous than an ordinary civil 
tumult. 

Courage was now no longer necessary, even to the 
military character. Men grew old in camps, and ac- 
quired the highest renown by their warlike achieve- 
ments, without being once required to face serious 
danger. The political consequences are too well 
known. The richest and most enlightened part of the 
world was left undefended to the assaults of every 
barbarous invader, to the brutality of Switzerland, the 
insolence of France, and the fierce rapacity of Aragon. 
The moral effects which followed from this state of 
things were still more remarkable. 



78 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Among the rude nations which lay beyond the Alps, 
valor was absolutely indispensable. Without it none 
could be eminent, few could be secure. Cowardice 
was, therefore, naturally considered as the foulest re- 
proach. Among the polished Italians, enriched by 
commerce, governed by law, and passionately attached 
to Hterature, every thing was done by superiority of 
intelligence. Their very wars, more pacific than the 
peace of their neighbors, required rather civil than 
military qualifications. Hence, while courage was the 
point of honor in other countries, ingenuity became 
the point of honor in Italy. 

From these principles were deduced, by processes 
strictly analogous, two opposite systems of fashionable 
morality. Through the greater part of Europe, the 
vices which pecuharly belong to timid dispositions, 
and which are the natural defence of weakness, fraud, 
and hypocrisy, have always been most disreputable. 
On the other hand, the excesses of haughty and daring 
spirits have been treated with indulgence, and even 
with respect. The Italians regarded with correspond- 
ing lenity those crimes which require self-command, 
address, quick observation, fertile invention, and pro- 
found knowledge of human nature. 

Such a prince as our Henry the Fifth would have 
been the idol of the North. The folhes of his youth, 
the selfish ambition of his manhood, the Lollards 
roasted at slow fires, the prisoners massacred on the 
field of battle, the expiring lease of priestcraft re- 
newed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a 



MA CHI A VELLL ^g 

causeless and hopeless war bequeathed to a people 
who had no interest in its event, every thing is for- 
gotten but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, 
on the other hand, was the model of Italian heroes. 
He made his employers and his rivals alike his tools. 
He first overpowered his open enemies by the help 
of faithless allies : he then armed himself against his 
allies with the spoils taken from his enemies. By his 
incomparable dexterity, he raised himself from the 
precarious and dependent situation of a military ad- 
venturer to the first throne of Italy. To such a man 
much was forgiven, — hollow friendship, ungenerous 
enmity, violated faith. Such are the opposite errors 
which men commit, when their morality is not a 
science, but a taste, when they abandon eternal prin- 
ciples for accidental associations. 

We have illustrated our meaning by an instance 
taken from history. We will select another from 
fiction. Othello murders his wife; he gives orders 
for the murder of his lieutenant ; he ends by murder- 
ing himself. Yet he never loses the esteem and affec- 
tion of Northern readers. His intrepid and ardent 
spirit redeems every thing. The unsuspecting confi- 
dence with which he hstens to his adviser, the agony 
with which he shrinks from the thought of shame, the 
tempest of passion with which he commits his crimes, 
and the haughty fearlessness with which he avows 
them, give an extraordinary interest to his character, 
lago, on the contrary, is the object of universal loath- 
ing. Many are inclined to suspect that Shakspeare 



80 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

has been seduced into an exaggeration unusual with 
him, and has drawn a monster who has no archetype 
in human nature. Now, we suspect that an ItaUan 
audience in the fifteenth century would have felt very 
differently. Othello would have inspired nothing but 
detestation and contempt. The folly with which he 
trusts the friendly professions of a man whose pro- 
motion he had obstructed, the creduhty with which 
he takes unsupported assertions, and trivial circum- 
stances, for unanswerable proofs, the violence with 
which he silences the exculpation till the exculpation 
can only aggravate his misery, would have excited the 
abhorrence and disgust of his spectators. The con- 
duct of lago they would assuredly have condemned, 
but they would have condemned it as we condemn 
that of his victim. Something of interest and respect 
would have mingled with their disapprobation. The 
readiness of the traitor's wit, the clearness of his judg- 
ment, the skill with which he penetrates the disposi- 
tions of others, and conceals his own, would have 
insured to him a certain portion of their esteem. 

So wide was the difference between the Italians and 
their neighbors. A similar difference existed between 
the Greeks of the second century before Christ, and 
their masters, the Romans. The conquerors, brave 
and resolute, faithful to their engagements, and strongly 
influenced by religious feelings, were, at the same time, 
ignorant, arbitrary, and cruel. With the vanquished 
people were deposited all the art, the science, and the 
literature of the Western world. In poetry, in phi- 



MA CHI A VELLL 8 1 

losophy, in painting, in architecture, in sculpture, they 
had no rivals- Their manners were polished, their 
perceptions acute, their invention ready; they were 
tolerant, affable, humane ; but of courage and sincer- 
ity they were almost utterly destitute. Every rude 
centurion consoled himself for his intellectual inferior- 
ity, by remarking that knowledge and taste seemed 
only to make men atheists, cowards, and slaves. The 
distinction long continued to be strongly marked, and 
furnished an admirable subject for the fierce sarcasms 
of Juvenal. 

The citizen of an Italian commonwealth was the 
Greek of the time of Juvenal and the Greek of the 
time of Pericles, joined in one. Like the former, he 
was timid and pliable, artful and mean. But, like the 
latter, he had a country. Its independence and pros- 
perity were dear to him. If his character were de- 
graded by some base crimes, it was, on the other 
hand, ennobled by public spirit and by an honorable 
ambition. 

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely 
a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice con- 
demned by the general opinion produces a pernicious 
effect on the whole character. The former is a local 
malady, the latter a constitutional taint. When the 
reputation of the offender is lost," he too often flings 
the remains of his virtue after it in despair. The 
Highland gentleman, who, a century ago, lived by 
taking black-mail from his neighbors, committed the 
same crime for which Wild was accompanied to 



82 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Tyburn by the huzzas of two hundred thousand 
people. But there can be no doubt that he was a 
much less depraved man than Wild. The deed for 
which Mrs. Brownrigg was hanged sinks into nothing 
when compared with the conduct of the Roman who 
treated the public to a hundred pair of gladiators. 
Yet we should greatly wrong such a Roman if we 
supposed that his disposition was as cruel as that of 
Mrs. Brownrigg. In our own country, a woman for- 
feits her place in society by what, in a man, is too 
commonly considered as an honorable distinction, 
and at worst as a venial error. The consequence is 
notorious. The moral principle of a woman is fre- 
quently more impaired by a single lapse from virtue 
than that of a man by twenty years of intrigues. Clas- 
sical antiquity would furnish us with instances stronger, 
if possible, than those to which we have referred. 

We must apply this principle to the case before us. 
Habits of dissimulation and falsehood, no doubt, mark 
a man of our age and country as utterly worthless and 
abandoned. But it by no means follows that a simi- 
lar judgment would be just in the case of an Italian in 
the Middle Ages. On the contrary, we frequently 
find those faults which we are accustomed to consider 
as certain indications of a mind altogether depraved, 
in company with great and good qualities, with gener- 
osity, with benevolence, with disinterestedness. From 
such a state of society, Palamedes, in the admirable 
dialogue of Hume, might have drawn illustrations of 
his theory as striking as any of those with which 



MA CHI A VELLI. 8 3 

Fourli furnished him. These are not, we well know, 
the lessons which historians are generally most care- 
ful to teach, or readers most willing to learn. But 
they are not therefore useless. How Philip disposed 
his troops at Choeronea, where Hannibal crossed the 
Alps, whether Mary blew up Darnley, or Siquier shot 
Charles the Twelfth, and ten thousand other questions 
of the same description, are in themselves unimpor- 
tant. The inquiry may amuse us, but the decision 
leaves us no wiser. He alone reads history aright, 
who observing how powerfully circumstances influence 
the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass 
into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to dis- 
tinguish what is accidental and transitory in human 
nature, from what is essential and immutable. 

In this respect, no history suggests more important 
reflections than that of the Tuscan and Lombard 
commonwealths. The character of the Italian states- 
man seems, at first sight, a collection of contradictions, 
a phantom as monstrous as the portress of hell in 
Milton, half divinity, half snake, majestic and beautiful 
above, grovelling and poisonous below. We see a man 
whose thoughts and words have no connection with 
each other, who never hesitates at an oath when he 
wishes to seduce, who never wants a pretext when he 
is inclined to betray. His cruelties spring, not from 
the heat of blood, or the insanity of uncontrolled 
power, but from deep and cool meditation. His 
passions, like well- trained troops, are impetuous by 
rule, and in their most headstrong fury never forget 



84 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

the discipline to which they have been accustomed. 
His wliole soul is occupied with vast and complicated 
schemes of ambition, yet his aspect and language 
exhibit nothing but philosophical moderation. Hatred 
and revenge eat into his heart ; yet every look is a 
cordial smile, every gesture a familiar caress. He 
never excites the suspicion of his adversaries by petty 
provocations. His purpose is disclosed, only when it 
is accomplished. His face is unruffled, his speech is 
courteous, till vigilance is laid asleep, till a vital point 
is exposed, till a sure aim is taken ; and then he strikes 
for the first and last time. Military courage, the boast 
of the sottish German, of the frivolous and prating 
Frenchman, of the romantic and arrogant Spaniard, 
he neither possesses nor values. He shuns danger, 
not because he is insensible to shame, but because, in 
the society in which he lives, timidity has ceased to be 
shameful. To do an injury openly is, in his estima- 
tion, as wicked as to do it secretly, and far less profit- 
able. With him the most honorable means are those 
which are the surest, the speediest, and the darkest. 
He cannot comprehend how a man should scruple to 
deceive those whom he does not scruple to destroy. 
He would think it madness to declare open hostilities 
against rivals whom he might stab in a friendly em- 
brace, or poison in a consecrated wafer. 

Yet this man, black with the vices which we con- 
sider as most loathsome, traitor, hypocrite, coward, 
assassin, was by no means destitute even of those 
virtues which we generally consider as indicating 



MACHIAVELLL 85 

superior elevation of character. In civil courage, in 
perseverance, in presence of mind, those barbarous 
warriors, who were foremost in the battle or the breach, 
were far his inferiors. Even the dangers which he 
avoided with a caution almost pusillanimous never 
confused his perceptions, never paralyzed his inventive 
faculties, never wrung out one secret from his smooth 
tongue and his inscrutable brow. Though a dangerous 
enemy, and a still more dangerous accomplice, he 
could be a just and beneficent ruler. With so much 
unfairness in his policy, there was an extraordinary 
degree of fairness in his intellect. Indifferent to truth 
in the transactions of life, he was honestly devoted to 
truth in the researches of speculation. Wanton cruelty 
was not in his nature. On the contrary, where no 
political object was at stake, his disposition was soft 
and humane. The susceptibility of his nerves and the 
activity of his imagination inclined him to sympathize 
with the feelings of others, and to delight in the 
charities and courtesies of social life. Perpetually 
descending to actions which might seem to mark a 
mind diseased through all its faculties, he had never- 
theless an exquisite sensibility, both for the natural 
and the moral sublime, for every graceful and every 
lofty conception. Habits of petty intrigue and dis- 
simulation might have rendered him incapable of great 
general views, but that the expanding effect of his 
philosophical studies counteracted the narrowing ten- 
dency. He had the keenest enjoyment of wit, elo- 
quence, and poetry. The fine arts profited alike by 



Z6 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

the severity of his judgment, and by the liberahty of 
his patronage. The portraits of some of the remark- 
able Itahans of those times are perfectly in harmony 
with this description. Ample and majestic foreheads ; 
brows strong and dark, but not frowning ; eyes of wliich 
the calm, full gaze, while it expresses nothing, seems 
to discern every thing ; cheeks pale with thought and 
sedentary habits ; lips formed with feminine delicacy, 
but compressed with more than masculine decision, — 
mark out men at once enterprising and timid, men 
equally skilled in detecting the purposes of others, 
and in concealing their own, men who must have been 
formidable enemies and unsafe allies, but men, at the 
same time, whose tempers were mild and equable, and 
who possessed an amplitude and subtlety of intellect 
which would have rendered them eminent either in 
active or in contemplative life, and fitted them either 
to govern or to instruct mankind. 

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic 
vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely 
any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid 
moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations 
change the fashion of their morals, with the fashion of 
their hats and their coaches ; take some other kind 
of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at 
the depravity of their ancestors. Nor is this all. 
Posterity, that high court of appeal which is never 
tired of eulogizing its own justice and discernment, 
acts on such occasions like a Roman dictator after a 
general mutiny. Finding the delinquents too numer- 



MA CHI A VELLI. 8/ 

ous to be all punished, it selects some of them at 
hazard, to bear the whole penalty of an offence in 
which they are not more deeply implicated than those 
who escape. Whether decimation be a convenient 
mode of military execution, we know not; but we 
solemnly protest against the introduction of such a 
principle into the philosophy of history. 

In the present instance, the lot has fallen on Machi- 
avelH, a man whose public conduct was upright and 
honorable, whose views of morality, where they dif- 
fered from those of the persons around him, seemed 
to have differed for the better, and whose only fault 
was, that, having adopted some of the maxims then 
generally received, he arranged them more lumi- 
nously, and expressed them more forcibly, than any 
other writer. 

Having now, we hope, in some degree cleared the 
personal character of Machiavelli, we come to the 
consideration of his works. As a poet he is not enti- 
tled to a high place, but his comedies deserve atten- 
tion. 

The " Mandragola," in particular, is superior to the 
best of Goldoni, and inferior only to the best of Mo- 
liere. It is the work of a man who, if he had devoted 
himself to the drama, would probably have attained 
the highest eminence, and produced a permanent and 
salutary effect on the national taste. This we infer, 
not so much from the degree, as from the kind, of its 
excellence. There are compositions which indicate 
still greater talent, and which are perused with still 



88 READINGS FROM MACAU LAY. 

greater delight, from which we should have drawn 
very different conclusions. Books quite worthless are 
quite harmless. The sure sign of the general decline 
of an art is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, 
but of misplaced beauty. In general, Tragedy is cor- 
rupted by eloquence, and Comedy by wit. 

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of 
human character. This, we conceive, is no arbitrary 
canon, originating in local and temporary associations, 
like those canons which regulate the number of acts 
in a play, or of syllables in a line. To thfs funda- 
mental law every other regulation is subordinate. The 
situations which most signally develop character form 
the best plot. The mother tongue of the passions is 
the best style. 

This principle rightly understood, does not debar 
the poet from any grace of composition. There is no 
style in which some man may not, under some circum- 
stances, express himself. There is, therefore, no style 
which the drama rejects, none which it does not occa- 
sionally require. It is in the discernment of place, 
of time, and of person, that the inferior artists fail. 
The fantastic rhapsody of Mercutio, the elaborate 
declamation of Antony, are, where Shakspeare has 
placed- them, natural and pleasing. But Dryden 
would have made Mercutio challenge Tybalt in hyper- 
boles as fanciful as those in which he describes the 
chariot of Mab. Corneille would have represented 
Antony as scolding and coaxing Cleopatra with all the 
measured rhetoric of a funeral oration. 



MACHIAVELLL 89 

No writers have injured the Comedy of England so 
deeply as Congreve and Sheridan. Both were men 
of splendid wit and polished taste. Unhappily, they 
made all their characters in their own likeness. Their 
works bear the same relation to the legitimate drama 
which a transparency bears to a painting. There are 
no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading into 
each other : the whole is lighted up with an universal 
glare. Outlines and tints are forgotten in the com- 
mon blaze which illuminates all. The flowers and 
fruits of the intellect abound ; but it is the abundance 
of a jungle, not of a garden, unwholesome, bewilder- 
ing, unprofitable from its very plenty, rank from its 
very fragrance. Every fop, every boor, every valet, is 
a man of wit. The very butts and dupes. Tattle, 
Witwould, Puff, Acres, outshine the whole Hotel of 
Rambouillet. To prove the whole system of this 
school erroneous, it is only necessary to apply the test 
which dissolved the enchanted Florimel, to place the 
true by the false Thalia, to contrast the most cele- 
brated characters which have been drawn by the 
writers of whom we speak with the Bastard in King 
John, or the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. It was not 
surely from want of wit that Shakspeare adopted so 
different a manner. Benedick and Beatrice throw 
Mirabel and Millamant into the shade. All the good 
sayings of the facetious houses of Absolute and Sur- 
face might have been clipped from the single char- 
acter of Falstaff without being missed. It would 
have been easy for that fertile mind to have given 



90 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Bardolph and Shallow as much wit as Prince Hal, and 
to have made Dogberry and Verges retort on each 
other in sparkling epigrams. But he knew that such 
indiscriminate prodigality was, to use his o\mi admir- 
able language, " from the purpose of playing, whose 
end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, 
as it were, the mirror up to nature." 

This digression will enable our readers to under- 
stand what we mean when we say, that, in the " Man- 
dragola," Machiavelli has proved that he completely 
understood the nature of the dramatic art, and pos- 
sessed talents which would have enabled him to excel 
in it. By the correct and vigorous delineation of 
human nature, it produces interest without a pleasing 
or skilful plot, and laughter without the least ambition 
of wit. The lover, not a very delicate or generous 
lover, and his adviser the parasite, are drawn with 
spirit. The hypocritical confessor is an admirable 
portrait. He is, if we mistake not, the original of 
Father Dominic, the best comic character of Dryden. 
But old Nicias is the glory of the piece. We cannot 
call to mind any thing that resembles him. The fol- 
lies which Moliere ridicules are those of affectation, 
not those of fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants, not 
absolute simpletons, are his game. Shakspeare has 
indeed a vast assortment of fools ; but the precise 
species of which we speak is not, if we remember 
right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool. But his 
animal spirits supply, to a certain degree, the place of 
cleverness. His talk is to that of Sir John what soda- 



MA CHI A VELLl 9 1 

water is to champagne. It has the effervescence, 
though not the body or the flavor. Slender and Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek are fools, troubled with an uneasy 
consciousness of their folly, which, in the latter, pro- 
duces meekness and docility, and in the former, awk- 
wardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloten is an 
arrogant fool, Osric a foppish fool, Ajax a savage fool ; 
but Nicias is, as Thersites says of Patroclus, a fool 
positive. His mind is occupied by no strong feeling : 
it takes every character, and retains none ; its aspect 
is diversified, not by passions, but by faint and transi- 
tory semblances of passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, 
a mock love, a mock pride, which chase each other 
like shadows over its surface, and vanish as soon as 
they appear. He is just idiot enough to be an object, 
not of pity or horror, but of ridicule. He bears some 
resemblance to poor Calandrino, whose mishaps, as re- 
counted by Boccaccio, have made all Europe merry for 
more than four centuries. He perhaps resembles still 
more closely Simon da Villa, to whom Bruno and Buf- 
falmacco promised the love of the Countess Civillari. 
Nicias is, like Simon, of a learned profession; and 
the dignity with which he wears the doctoral fur ren- 
ders his absurdities infinitely more grotesque. The 
old Tuscan is the very language for such a being. Its 
peculiar simplicity gives even to the most forcible 
reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, 
generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes 
a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp 
when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, 
and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. 



92 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

We may add, that the verses with which the " Man- 
dragola" is interspersed, appear to us to be the most 
spirited and correct of all that Machiavelh has written 
in metre. He seems to have entertained the same 
opinion, for he has introduced some of them in other 
places. The contemporaries of the author were not 
blind to the merits of this striking piece. It was acted 
at Florence with the greatest success. Leo the Tenth 
was among its admirers, and by his order it was repre- 
sented at Rome.' 

The "Clizia" is an imitation of the ''Casina" of 
Plautus, which is itself an imitation of the lost kXt/- 
povjxevoL of Diphilus. Plautus was, unquestionably, one 
of the best Latin writers; but the "Casina" is by no 
means one of his best plays, nor is it one which offers 
great facilities to an imitator. The story is as alien 
from modern habits of life as the manner in which it 
is developed from the modern fashion of composition. 
The lover remains in the country and the heroine in 
her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate 
to be decided by a foolish father, a cunning mother, 
and two knavish servants. Machiavelh has executed 
his task with judgment and taste. He has accommo- 
dated the plot to a different state of society, and has 
very dexterously connected it with the history of his 
own times. The relation of the trick put on the doting 



^ Nothing can be more evident than that Paulus Jovius designates the 
Mandragola under the name of the Nicias. We should not have noticed what 
is so perfectly obvious, were it not that this natural and palpable misnomer 
has led the sagacious and industrious Bayle into a gross error. 



MA CHI A VELL L 93 

old lover is exquisitely humorous. It is far superior 
to the corresponding passage in the Latin comedy, 
and scarcely yields to the account which Falstaff gives 
of his ducking. 

Two other comedies without titles, the one in prose, 
the other in verse, appear among the works of Machia- 
velli. The former is very short, lively enough, but of 
no great value. The latter we can scarcely believe to 
be genuine. Neither its merits nor its defects remind 
us of the reputed author. It was first printed in 1 796, 
from a manuscript discovered in the celebrated library 
of the Strozzi. Its genuineness, if we have been 
rightly informed, is established solely by the compari- 
son of hands. Our suspicions are strengthened by 
the circumstance, that the same manuscript contained 
a description of the plague of 1527, which has also, in 
consequence, been added to the works of Machiavelli. 
Of this last composition, the strongest external evi- 
dence would scarcely induce us to believe him guilty. 
Nothing was ever written more detestable in matter 
and manner. The narrations, the reflections, the 
jokes, the lamentations, are all the very worst of their 
respective kinds, at once trite and affected, threadbare 
tinsel from the Rag Fairs and Monmouth Streets of 
literature. A foolish schoolboy might write such a 
piece, and, after he had written it, think it much finer 
than the incomparable introduction of " The Decam- 
eron." But that a shrewd statesman, whose earliest 
works are characterized by manliness of thought and 
language, should, at near sixty years of age, descend 
to such puerility, is utterly inconceivable. 



94 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

The little novel of " Belphegor " is pleasantly con- 
ceived, and pleasantly told. But the extravagance of 
the satire in some measure injures its effect. Machia- 
velli was unhappily married ; and his wish to avenge 
his own cause, and that of his brethren in misfortune, 
carried him beyond even the license of fiction. Jon- 
son seems to have combined some hints taken from 
this tale, with others from Boccaccio, in the plot of 
"The Devil is an Ass," a play which, though not the 
most highly finished of his compositions, is perhaps 
that which exhibits the strongest proofs of genius. 

The political correspondence of Machiavelli, first 
published in 1767, is unquestionably genuine, and 
highly valuable. The unhappy circumstances in which 
his country was placed during the greater part of his 
public life gave extraordinary encouragement to diplo- 
matic talents. From the moment that Charles the 
Eighth descended from the Alps, the whole character 
of Italian politics was changed. The governments of 
the Peninsula ceased to form an independent system. 
Drawn from their old orbit by the attraction of the 
larger bodies which now approached them, they be- 
came mere satellites of France and Spain. All their 
disputes, internal and external, were decided by foreign 
influence. The contests of opposite factions were car- 
ried on, not as formerly in the senate-house or in the 
market-place, but in the antechambers of Louis and 
Ferdinand. Under these circumstances, the prosperity 
of the Italian States depended far more on the ability 
of their foreign agents, than on the conduct of those 



MACHIAVELLI. 95 

who were intrusted with the domestic administration. 
The ambassador had to discharge functions far more 
deUcate than transmitting orders of knighthood, intro- 
ducing tourists, or presenting his brethren with the 
homage of his high consideration. He was an advo- 
cate to whose management the dearest interests of his 
cHents were intrusted, a spy clothed with an inviolable 
character. Instead of consulting, by a reserved man- 
ner and ambiguous style, the dignity of those whom 
he represented, he was to plunge into all the intrigues 
of the court at which he resided, to discover and flat- 
ter every weakness of the prince, and of the favorite 
who governed the prince, and of the lackey who 
governed the favorite. He was to compliment the 
mistress, and bribe the confessor, to panegyrize or sup- 
plicate, to laugh or weep, to accommodate himself to 
every caprice, to lull every suspicion, to treasure every 
hint, to be every thing, to observe every thing, to en- 
dure every thing. High as the art of political intrigue 
had been carried in Italy, these were times which 
required it all. 

On these arduous errands Machiavelli was frequently 
employed. He was sent to treat with the King of the 
Romans and with the Duke of Valentinois. He was 
twice ambassador at the Court of Rome, and thrice at 
that of France. In these missions, and in several 
others of inferior importance, he acquitted himself 
with great dexterity. His despatches form one of the 
most amusing and instructive collections extant. The 
narratives are clear and agreeably written, the remarks 



96 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

on men and things clever and judicious. The conver- 
sations are reported in a spirited and characteristic 
manner. We find ourselves introduced into the pres- 
ence of the men who, during twenty eventful years, 
swayed the destinies of Europe, Their wit and their 
folly, their fretfulness and their merriment, are exposed 
to us. We are admitted to overhear their chat, and 
to watch their familiar gestures. It is interesting and 
curious to recognize, in circumstances which elude the 
notice of historians, the feeble violence and shallow 
cunning of Louis the Twelfth ; the bustling insignifi- 
cance of Maximilian, cursed with an impotent pruri- 
ency for renown, rash yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, 
always in a hurry, yet always too late ; the fierce and 
haughty energy which gave dignity to the eccentrici- 
ties of Julius ; the soft and graceful manners which 
masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable 
hatred of Caesar Borgia. 

We have mentioned Caesar Borgia. It is impossible 
not to pause for a moment on the name of a man in 
whom the political morality of Italy was so strongly 
personified, partially blended with the sterner linea- 
ments of the Spanish character. On two important 
occasions Machiavclli was admitted to his society, — 
once, at the moment when Caesar's splendid villany 
achieved its most signal triumph, when he caught in 
one snare, and crushed at one blow, all his most for- 
midable rivals ; and again when, exhausted by disease, 
and overwhelmed by misfortunes, which no human 
prudence could have averted, he was the prisoner of 



MACHIAVELLI. 9/ 

the deadliest enemy of his house. These interviews 
between the greatest speculative and the greatest prac- 
tical statesmen of the age are fully described in the 
" Correspondence," and form, perhaps, the most inter- 
esting part of it. From some passages in " The Prince," 
and perhaps also from some indistinct traditions, sev- 
eral writers have supposed a connection between those 
remarkable men much closer than ever existed. The 
Envoy has even been accused of prompting the crimes 
of the artful and merciless tyrant. But, from the offi- 
cial documents, it is clear that their intercourse, though 
ostensibly amicable, was in reahty hostile. It cannot 
be doubted, however, that the imagination of Machia- 
velli was strongly impressed, and his speculations on 
government colored, by the observations which he 
made on the singular character and equally singular 
fortunes of a man who, under such disadvantages, had 
achieved such exploits ; who, when sensuality, varied 
through innumerable forms, could no longer stimulate 
his sated mind, found a more powerful and durable 
excitement in the intense thirst of empire and revenge ; 
who emerged from the sloth and luxury of the Roman 
purple the first prince and general of the age ; who, 
trained in an unwarlike profession, formed a gallant 
army out of the dregs of an unwarlike people ; who, 
after acquiring sovereignty by destroying his enemies, 
acquired popularity by destroying his tools ; who had 
begun to employ for the most salutary ends the power 
which he had attained by the most atrocious means ; 
who tolerated within the sphere of his iron despotism 



98 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

no plunderer or oppressor but himself; and who fell 
at last amidst the mingled curses and regrets of a peo- 
ple of whom his genius had been the wonder, and 
might have been the salvation. Some of those crimes 
of Borgia which to us appear the most odious, would 
not, from causes which we have already considered, 
have struck an Italian of the fifteenth century with 
equal horror. Patriotic feeling also might induce 
Machiavelli to look with some indulgence and regret 
on the memory of the only leader who could have 
defended the independence of Italy against the con- 
federate spoilers of Cambray. 

On this subject, Machiavelli felt most strongly. In- 
deed, the expulsion of the foreign tyrants, and the 
restoration of that golden age which had preceded the 
irruption of Charles the Eighth, were projects which, 
at that time, fascinated all the master-spirits of Italy. 
The magnificent vision delighted the great but ill- 
regulated mind of Julius. It divided with manuscripts 
and sauces, painters and falcons, the attention of the 
frivolous Leo. It prompted the generous treason of 
Morone. It imparted a transient energy to the feeble 
mind and body of the last Sforza. It excited for one 
moment an honest ambition in the false heart of Pes- 
cara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the 
vices of the national character. To the discriminating 
cruelties of politicians, committed for great ends on 
select victims, the moral code of the Italians was too 
indulgent. But, though they might have recourse to 
barbarity as an expedient, they did not require it as a 



MACHIAVELLL 99 

Stimulant. They turned with loathing from the atro- 
city of the strangers who seemed to love blood for its 
own sake ; who, not content with subjugating, were 
impatient to destroy ; who found a fiendish pleasure in 
razing magnificent cities, cutting the throats of enemies 
who cried for quarter, or suffocating an unarmed popu- 
lation by thousands in the caverns to which it had fled 
for safety. Such were the cruelties which daily excited 
the terror and disgust of a people among whom, till 
lately, the worst that a soldier had to fear in a pitched 
battle was the loss of his horse and the expense of his 
ransom. The swinish intemperance of Switzerland ; 
the wolfish avarice of Spain ; the gross licentiousness of 
the French, indulged in violation of hospitality, of de- 
cency, of love itself ; the wanton inhumanity which was 
common to all the invaders, — had made them objects 
of deadly hatred to the inhabitants of the Peninsula. 
The wealth which had been accumulated during cen- 
turies of prosperity and repose was rapidly melting 
away. The intellectual superiority of the oppressed 
people only rendered them more keenly sensible of 
their political degradation. Literature and taste, in- 
deed, still disguised with a flush of hectic loveliness 
and brilliancy the ravages of an incurable decay. The 
iron had not yet entered into the soul. The time was 
not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, and 
reason to be hoodwinked, when the harp of the poet 
was to be hung on the willows of Arno, and the right 
hand of the painter to forget its cunning. Yet a dis- 
cerning eye might even then have seen that genius and 



100 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

learning would not long survive the state of things 
from which they had sprung, and that the great men 
whose talents gave lustre to that melancholy period had 
been formed under the influence of happier days, and 
would leave no successors behind them. The times 
which shine with the greatest splendor in literary his- 
tory are not always those to which the human mind 
is most indebted. Of this we may be convinced, by 
comparing the generation which follows them with that 
which had preceded them. The first fruits which are 
reaped under a bad system often spring from seed 
sown under a good one. Thus it was, in some meas- 
ure, with the Augustan age. Thus it was with the age 
of Raphael and Ariosto, of Aldus and Vida. 

Machiavelli deeply regretted the misfortunes of his 
country, and clearly discerned the cause and the rem- 
edy. It was the mihtary system of the Italian people 
which had extinguished their valor and discipline, and 
left their wealth an easy prey to every foreign plun- 
derer. The secretary projected a scheme alike honor- 
able to his heart and to his intellect, for abolishing the 
use of mercenary troops, and for organizing a national 
militia. 

The exertions which he made to effect this great 
object ought alone to rescue his name from obloquy. 
Though his situation and his habits were pacific, he 
studied with intense assiduity the theory of war. He 
made himself master of all its details. The Florentine 
government entered into his views. A council of war 
was appointed. Levies were decreed. The indefati- 



MA CHI A VELLL I O I 

gable minister flew from place to place in order to su- 
perintend the execution of his design. The times 
were, in some respects, favorable to the experiment. 
The system of military tactics had undergone a great 
revolution. The cavalry was no longer considered as 
forming the strength of an army. The hours which a 
citizen could spare from his ordinary employments, 
though by no means sufficient to familiarize him with 
the exercise of a man-at-arms, might render him an 
useful foot-soldier. The dread of a foreign yoke, of 
plunder, massacre, and conflagration, might have con- 
quered that repugnance to military pursuits which both 
the industry and the idleness of great towns commonly 
generate. For a time the scheme promised well. 
The new troops acquitted themselves respectably in the 
field. MachiavelU looked with parental rapture on 
the success of his plan, and began to hope that the 
arms of Italy might once more be formidable to the 
barbarians of the Tagus and the Rhine. But the tide 
of misfortune came on before the barriers which should 
have withstood it were prepared. For a time, indeed, 
Florence might be considered as peculiarly fortunate. 
Famine and sword and pestilence had devastated the 
fertile plains and stately cities of the Po. All the 
curses denounced of old against Tyre seemed to have 
fallen on Venice. Her merchants already stood afar 
off, lamenting for their great city. The time seemed 
near when the sea-weed should overgrow her silent 
Rialto, and the fisherman wash his nets in her deserted 
arsenal Naples had been four times conquered and 



102 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

reconquered by tyrants equally indifferent to its wel- 
fare, and equally greedy for its spoils. Florence, as 
yet, had only to endure degradation and extortion, to 
submit to the mandates of foreign powers, to buy over 
and over again, at an enormous price, what was 
already justly her own, to return thanks for being 
wronged, and to ask pardon for being in the right. 
She was at length deprived of the blessings, even of 
this infamous and servile repose. Her military and 
political institutions were swept away together. The 
Medici returned, in the train of foreign invaders, from 
their long exile. The policy of MachiaveUi was aban- 
doned ; and his public services were requited with 
poverty, imprisonment, and torture. 

The fallen statesman still clung to his project with 
unabated ardor. With the view of vindicating it from 
some popular objections, and of refuting some prevail- 
ing errors on the subject of military science, he wrote 
his " Seven Books on the Art of War." This excellent 
work is in the form of a dialogue. The opinions of 
the writer are put into the mouth of Fabrizio Colonna, 
a powerful nobleman of the Ecclesiastical State, and 
an officer of distinguished merit in the service of the 
King of Spain. Colonna visits Florence on his way 
from Lombardy to his own domains. He is invited to 
meet some friends at the house of Cosimo Rucellai, an 
amiable and accomplished young man, whose early 
death MachiaveUi feelingly deplores. After partaking 
of an elegant entertainment, they retire from the heat 
into the most shady recesses of the garden. Fabrizio 



MA CHI A VELLT. 1 03 

is struck by the sight of some uncommon plants. Co- 
sirao says, that, though rare in modern days, they are 
frequently mentioned by the classical authors, and that 
his grandfather, hke many other Italians, amused him- 
self with practising the ancient methods of gardening. 
Fabrizio expresses his regret that those who, in later 
times, affected the manners of the old Romans, should 
select for imitation the most trifling pursuits. This 
leads to a conversation on the decline of military dis- 
cipline, and on the best means of restoring it. The 
institution of the Florentine mihtia is ably defended, 
and several improvements are suggested in the details. 
The Swiss and the Spaniards were, at that time, 
regarded as the best soldiers in Europe. The Swiss 
battalion consisted of pikemen, and bore a close re- 
semblance to the Greek phalanx. The Spaniards, like 
the soldiers of Rome, were armed with the sword and 
the shield. The victories of Flamininus and i^milius 
over the Macedonian kings seem to prove the superi- 
ority of the weapons used by the legions. The same 
experiment had been recently tried with the same re- 
sult at the battle of Ravenna, one of those tremendous 
days into which human folly and wickedness compress 
the whole devastation of a famine or a plague. In 
that memorable conflict, the infantry of Aragon, the 
old companions of Gonsalvo, deserted by all their 
allies, hewed a passage through the thickest of the 
imperial pikes, and effected an unbroken retreat, in 
the face of the gendarmerie of De Foix, and the re- 
nowned artillery of Este. Fabrizio, or rather Machia- 



104 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

velli, proposes to combine the two systems, to arm the 
foremost Unes with the pike for the purpose of repuls- 
ing cavalry, and those in the rear with the sword, as 
being a weapon better adapted for every other purpose. 
Throughout the work, the author expresses the highest 
admiration of the military science of the ancient Ro- 
mans, and the greatest contempt for the maxims which 
had been in vogue amongst the Italian commanders 
of the preceding generation. He prefers infantry to 
cavalry, and fortified camps to fortified towns. He is 
inclined to substitute rapid movements and decisive 
engagements for the languid and dilatory operations 
of his countrymen. He attaches very little importance 
to the invention of gunpowder. Indeed, he seems to 
think that it ought scarcely to produce any change in 
the mode of arming or of disposing troops. The gen- 
eral testimony of historians, it must be allowed, seems 
to prove that the ill-constructed and ill-ser\'ed artillery 
of those times, though useful in a siege, was of little 
value on the field of batde. 

Of the tactics of Machiavelli we will not venture to 
give an opinion, but we are certain that his book is 
most able and interesting. As a commentary on the 
history of his times, it is invaluable. The ingenuity, 
the grace, and the perspicuity of the style, and the 
eloquence and animation of particular passages, must 
give pleasure, even to readers who take no interest in 
the subject. 

" The Prince " and the " Discourses on Livy " were 
written after the fall of the Republican Government. 



MA CHI A VELLI. 1 05 

The former was dedicated to the young Lorenzo de' 
Medici. This circumstance seems to have disgusted 
the contemporaries of the writer far more than the 
doctrines which have rendered the name of the work 
odious in later times. It was considered as an indica- 
tion of poHtical apostasy. The fact, however, seems to 
have been, that MachiavelU, despairing of the hberty 
of Florence, was incHned to support any government 
which might preserve her independence. The interval 
which separated a democracy and a despotism, Soderini 
and Lorenzo, seemed to vanish when compared with 
the difference between the former and the present state 
of Italy, between the security, the opulence, and the 
repose which she had enjoyed under its native rulers, 
and the misery in which she had been plunged since 
the fatal year in which the first foreign tyrant had de- 
scended from the Alps. The noble and pathetic ex- 
hortation with which " The Prince " concludes, shows 
how strongly the writer felt upon this subject. 

" The Prince " traces the progress of an ambitious 
man, the " Discourses " the progress of an ambitious 
people. The same principles on which, in the former 
work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are 
applied, in the latter, to the longer duration and more 
complex interest of a society. To a modern statesman, 
the form of the " Discourses " may appear to be pue- 
rile. In truth, Livy is not an historian on whom im- 
plicit reliance can be placed, even in cases where he 
must have possessed considerable means of informa- 
tion. And the first Decade, to which MachiavelH has 



I06 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

confined himself, is scarcely entitled to more credit 
than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before 
the Roman invasion. But the commentator is in- 
debted to Livy for little more than a few texts which 
he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or 
"The Decameron." The whole train of thought is 
original. 

On the peculiar immorality which has rendered 
" The Prince " unpopular, and which is almost equally 
discernible in the " Discourses," we have already given 
our opinion at length. We have attempted to show 
that it belonged rather to the age than to the man, 
that it was a partial taint, and by no means implied 
general depravity. We cannot, however, deny that it 
is a great blemish, and that it considerably diminishes 
the pleasure which, in other respects, those works must 
afford to every intelligent mind. 

It is, indeed, impossible to conceive a more health- 
ful and vigorous constitution of the understanding than 
that which these works indicate. The qualities of the 
active and the contemplative statesman appear to have 
been blended in the mind of the writer into a rare and 
exquisite harmony. His skill in the details of business 
had not been acquired at the expense of his general 
powers. It had not rendered his mind less compre- 
hensive ; but it had served to correct his speculations, 
and to impart to them that vivid and practical charac- 
ter which so widely distinguishes them from the vague 
theories of most political philosophers. 

Every man who ha^ seen the world, knows that 



MA CHI A VELLI. 1 0/ 

nothing is so useless as a general maxim. If it be very 
moral and very true, it may serve for a copy to a char- 
ity boy. If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be spar- 
kling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto 
for an essay. But few indeed of the many wise apoph- 
thegms which have been uttered, from the time of the 
Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard, have 
prevented a single foolish action. We give the highest 
and the most pecuHar praise to the precepts of Machia- 
velli when we say that they may frequently be of real 
use in regulating conduct, not so much because they 
are more just or more profound than those which 
might be culled from other authors, as because they 
can be more readily applied to the problems of real 
life. 

There are errors in these works. But they are 
errors which a writer, situated like Machiavelli, could 
scarcely avoid. They arise, for the most part, from a 
single defect which appears to us to pervade his whole 
system. In his political scheme, the means had been 
more deeply considered than the ends. The great 
principle, that societies and laws exist only for the 
purpose of increasing the sum of private happiness, is 
not recognized with sufficient clearness. The good of 
the body, distinct from the good of the members, and 
sometimes hardly compatible with the good of the 
members, seems to be the object which he proposes to 
himself. Of all political fallacies, this has perhaps had 
the widest and the most mischievous operation. The 
state of society in the little commonwealths of Greece, 



I08 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

the close connection and mutual dependence of the 
citizens, and the severity of the laws of war, tended to 
encourage an opinion which, under such circumstances, 
could hardly be called erroneous. The interests of 
every individual were inseparably bound up with those 
of "the state. An invasion destroyed his corn-fields 
and vineyards, drove him from his home, and com- 
pelled him to encounter all the hardships of a military 
life. A treaty of peace restored him to security and 
comfort. A victory doubled the number of his slaves. 
A defeat perhaps made him a slave himself. When 
Pericles, in the Peloponnesian war, told the Athenians, 
that, if their country triumphed, their private losses 
would speedily be repaired, but that, if their arms 
failed of success, every individual amongst them would 
probably be ruined, he spoke no more than the truth. 
He spoke to men whom the tribute of vanquished 
cities supplied with food and clothing, with the luxury 
of the bath and the amusements of the theatre, on 
whom the greatness of their country conferred rank, 
and before whom the members of less prosperous com- 
munities trembled ; to men who, in case of a change 
in the public fortunes, would, at least, be deprived of 
every comfort and every distinction which they en- 
joyed. To be butchered on the smoking ruins of their 
city, to be dragged in chains to a slave-market, to see 
one child torn from them to dig in the quarries of 
Sicily, and another to guard the harems of Persepolis, 
these were the frequent and probable consequences of 
national calamities. Hence, among the Greeks, patri- 



MA CHI A VEL LI. 1 09 

otism became a governing principle, or rather an 
ungovernable passion. Their legislators and their phi- 
losophers took it for granted, that, in providing for the 
strength and greatness of the state, they sufficiently 
provided for the happiness of the people. The writers 
of the Roman empire lived under despots, into whose 
dominion a hundred nations were melted down, and 
whose gardens would have covered the little common- 
wealths of Phlius and Plataea. Yet they continued to 
employ the same language, and to cant about the duty 
of sacrificing every thing to a country to which they 
owed nothing. 

Causes similar to those which had influenced the 
disposition of the Greeks operated powerfully on the 
less vigorous and daring character of the Italians. 
The Italians, like the Greeks, were members of small 
communities. Every man was deeply interested in the 
welfare of the society to which he belonged, a partaker 
in its wealth and its poverty, in its glory and its shame. 
In the age of Machiavelli this was peculiarly the case. 
Public events had produced an immense sum of misery 
to private citizens. Tlie Northern invaders had brought 
want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their 
roofs, and the knife to their throats. It was natural 
that a man who lived in times like these should over- 
rate the importance of those measures by which a 
nation is rendered formidable to its neighbors, and 
underv'alue those which make it prosperous within 
itself. 

Nothing is more remarkable in the political treatises 



I lO READINGS FROM MA CA ULA Y. 

of Machiavelli than the fairness of mind which they 
indicate. It appears where the author is in the wrong, 
almost as strongly as where he is in the right. He 
never advances a false opinion because it is new or 
splendid, because he can clothe it in a happy phrase, 
or defend it by an ingenious sophism. His errors are 
at once explained by a reference to the circumstances 
in which he was placed. They evidently were not 
sought out : they lay in his way, and could scarcely be 
avoided. Such mistakes must necessarily be commit- 
ted by early speculators in every science. 

In this respect, it is amusing to compare " The 
Prince " and the " Discourses " with " The Spirit of 
Laws." Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps, a wider celeb- 
rity than any political writer of modern Europe. 
Something he doubtless owes to his merit, but much 
more to his fortune. He had the good luck of a Val- 
entine. He caught the eye of the French nation at 
the moment when it was waking from the long sleep 
of political and religious bigotry ; and, in consequence, 
he became a favorite. The English, at that time, con- 
sidered a Frenchman who talked about constitutional 
checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less as- 
tonishing than the learned pig or the musical infant. 
Specious but shallow, studious of effect, indifferent to 
truth, eager to build a system, but careless of collect- 
ing those materials out of which alone a sound and 
durable system can be built, the lively president con- 
structed theories as rapidly and as slightly as card- 
houses, no sooner projected than completed, no sooner 



MA CHI A VELLL 1 1 1 

completed than blown away, no sooner blo\^Ti away 
than forgotten. Machiavelli errs only because his ex- 
perience, acquired in a very peculiar state of society, 
could not always enable him to calculate the effect of 
institutions differing from those of which he had ob- 
served the operation. Montesquieu errs • because he 
has a fine thing to say, and is resolved to say it. If 
the phenomena which lie before him will not suit his 
purpose, all history must be ransacked. If nothing 
established by authentic testimony can be racked or 
chipped to suit his Procrustean hypothesis, he puts up 
with some monstrous fable about Siam or Bantam or 
Japan, told by writers compared with whom Lucian 
and Gulliver were veracious, liars by a double right, 
as travellers and as Jesuits. 

Propriety of thought, and propriety of diction, are 
commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation 
are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of ex- 
pression generally springs from confusion of ideas ; and 
the same wish to dazzle at any cost which produces 
affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to pro- 
duce sophistry in his reasonings. The judicious and 
candid mind of Machiavelli shows itself in his lumi- 
nous, manly, and polished language. The style of 
Montesquieu, on the other hand, indicates in every 
page a lively and ingenious, but an unsound, mind. 
Every trick of expression, from the mysterious concise- 
ness of an oracle to the flippancy of a Parisian cox- 
comb, is employed to disguise the fallacy of some 
positions and the triteness of others. Absurdities are 



1 1 2 READINGS FROM MA CA ULA V. 

brightened into epigrams : truisms are darkened into 
enigmas. It is with difhciihy that the strongest eye 
can sustain the glare with which some parts are illumi- 
nated, or penetrate the shade in which others are 
concealed. 

The political works of Machiavelli derive a pecul- 
iar interest from the mournful earnestness which he 
manifests whenever he touches on topics connected 
with the calamities of his native land. It is difficult 
to conceive any situation more painful than that of a 
great man, condemned to watch the lingering agony 
of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alter- 
nate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its 
dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disap- 
pear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, dark- 
ness, and corruption. To this joyless and thankless 
duty was Machiavelli called. In the energetic lan- 
guage of the prophet, he was " mad for the sight of 
his eyes which he saw," — disunion in the council, ef- 
feminacy in the camp, liberty extinguished, commerce 
decaying, national honor sullied, an enlightened and 
flourishing people given over to the ferocity of igno- 
nant savages. Though his opinions had not escaped 
the contagion of that political immorality which was 
common among his countrymen, his natural disposi- 
tion seems to have been rather stern and impetuous 
than pliant and artful. When the misery and degra- 
dation of Florence, and the foul outrage which he had 
himself sustained, recur to his mind, the smooth craft 
of his profession and his nation is exchanged for the 



MA CHI A VEL LI. 1 1 3 

honest bitterness of scorn and anger. He speaks like 
one sick of the calamitous times and abject people 
among whom his lot is cast. He pines for the 
strength and glory of ancient Rome, for the fasces of 
Brutus and the sword of Scipio, the gravity of the 
curule chair, and the bloody pomp of the triumphal 
sacrifice. He seems to be transported back to the 
days when eight hundred thousand Italian warriors 
sprung to arms at the nmior of a Gallic invasion. He 
breathes all the spirit of those intrepid and haughty 
senators who forgot the dearest ties of nature in the 
claims of public duty, who looked with disdain on 
the elephants and on the gold of Pyrrhus, and listened 
with unaltered composure to the tremendous tidings 
of Cannae. Like an ancient temple deformed by the 
barbarous architecture of a later age, his character 
acquires an interest from the very circumstances 
which debase it. The original proportions are ren- 
dered more striking by the contrast which they pre- 
sent to the mean and incongruous additions. 

The influence of the sentiments which we have de- 
scribed was not apparent in his writings alone. His 
enthusiasm, barred from the career which it would 
have selected for itself, seems to have found a vent in 
desperate levity. He enjoyed a vindictive pleasure in 
outraging the opinions of a society which he despised. 
He became careless of the decencies which were ex- 
pected from a man so highly distinguished in the lit- 
erary and political world. The sarcastic bitterness of 
his conversation disgusted those who were more in- 



1 14 READINGS FROM MAC A ULA V. 

clined to accuse his licentiousness than their own 
degeneracy, and who were unable to conceive the 
strength of those emotions which are concealed by 
the jests of the wretched, and by the follies of the 
wise. 

The historical works of Machiavelli still remain to 
be considered. The life of Castruccio Castracani will 
occupy us for a very short time, and would scarcely 
have demanded our notice had it not attracted a 
much greater share of public attention than it de- 
serves. Few books, indeed, could be more interesting 
than a careful and judicious account, from such a 
pen, of the illustrious Prince of Lucca, the most emi- 
nent of those Italian chiefs, who, like Pisistratus and 
Gelon, acquired a power felt rather than seen, and 
resting, not on law or on prescription, but on the 
public favor and on their great personal qualities. 
Such a work would exhibit to us the real nature of 
that species of sovereignty, so singular and so often 
misunderstood, which the Greeks denominated tyr- 
anny, and which, modified in some degree by the 
feudal system, re-appeared in the commonwealths of 
Lombardy and Tuscany. But this little composition 
of Machiavelli is in no sense a history. It has no 
pretensions to fidelity. It is a trifle, and not a very 
successful trifle. It is scarcely more authentic than 
the novel of " Belphegor," and is very much duller. 

The last great work of this illustrious man was the 
history of his native city. It was written by command 
of the Pope, who, as chief of the house of Medici, 



MA CHI A VELLL 1 1 5 

was at that time sovereign of Florence. The charac- 
ters of Cosmo, of Piero, and of Lorenzo, are, how- 
ever, treated with a freedom and impartiahty equaUy 
honorable to the writer and to the patron. The 
miseries and humiliations of dependence, the bread 
which is more bitter than every other food, the stairs 
which are more painful than every other ascent, had 
not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most cor- 
rupting post in a corrupting profession had not de- 
praved the generous heart of Clement. 

The history does not appear to be the fruit of much 
industry or research. It is unquestionably inaccurate. 
But it is elegant, lively, and picturesque, beyond any 
other in the Italian language. The reader, we be- 
lieve, carries away from it a more vivid and a more 
faithful impression of the national character and man- 
ners than from more correct accounts. The truth is, 
that the book belongs rather to ancient than to mod- 
em literature. It is in the style, not of Davila and 
Clarendon, but of Herodotus and Tacitus. The clas- 
sical histories may almost be called romances founded 
in fact. The relation is, no doubt, in all its principal 
points, strictly true. But the numerous little inci- 
dents v,-hich heighten the interest, the words, the 
gestures, the looks, are evidently furnished by the im- 
agination of the author. The fashion of later times is 
different. A more exact narratwe is given by the 
writer. It may be doubted whether more exact no- 
tions are conveyed to the reader. The best portraits 
are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of 



Il6 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

caricature, and we are not certain that the best his- 
tories are not those in which a httle of the exaggera- 
tion of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. 
Something is lost in accuracy, but much is gained in 
effect. The fainter lines are neglected, but the great 
characteristic features are imprinted on the mind for- 
ever. 

The history terminates with the death of Lorenzo 
de' Medici. Machiavelli had, it seem.s, intended to 
continue his narrative to a later period. But his 
death prevented the execution of his design, and 
the melancholy task of recording the desolation and 
shame of Italy devolved on Guicciardini. 

Machiavelli lived long enough to see the com- 
mencement of the last stniggle for Florentine liberty. 
Soon after his death, monarchy was finally established, 
not such a monarchy as that of which Cosmo had laid 
the foundations deep in the institutions and feelings 
of his countrym.en, and which Lorenzo had embel- 
lished with the trophies of every science and every 
art, but a loathsome tyranny, proud and mean, cruel 
and feeble, bigoted and lascivious. The character of 
Machiavelli was hateful to the new masters of Italy, 
and those parts of his theory which were in strict 
accordance with their own daily practice afforded a 
pretext for blackening his memory. His works wer' 
misrepresented by the learned, misconstrued by th 
ignorant, censured by the Church, abused with all th 
rancor of simulated virtue by the tools of a base gov 
ernment and the priests of a baser superstition. Tl 



MA CHI A VELLL 1 1 / 

name of the man whose genius had illuminated all the 
dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic wisdom 
an oppressed people had owed their last chance of 
emancipation and revenge, passed into a proverb of 
infam.y. For more than two hundred years his bones 
lay undistinguished. At length an English nobleman 
paid the last honors to the greatest statesman of Flor- 
ence. In the Church of Santa Croce a monument 
was erected to his memory, which is contemplated 
with reverence by all who can distinguish the virtues 
of a great mind through the corruptions of a degen- 
erate age, and which will be approached with still 
deeper homage when the object to which his public 
life was devoted shall be attained, when the foreign 
yoke shall be broken, when a second Procida shall 
avenge the wrongs of Naples, when a happier Rienzi 
shall restore the good estate of Rome, when the 
streets of Florence and Bologna shall again resound 
with their ancient war-cry, Popolo; popolo; muoiano 
i tiranni ! 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 



PREFACE. 



That what is called the history of the Kings and 
early Consuls of Rome, is to a great extent fabulous, 
few scholars have, since the time of Beaufort, ventured 
to deny. It is certain, that, more than three hundred 
and sixty years after the date ordinarily assigned for 
the foundation of the city, the public records were, 
with scarcely an exception, destroyed by the Gauls. 
It is certain that the oldest annals of the common- 
wealth were compiled more than a century and a half 
after this destruction of the records. It is certain, 
therefore, that the great Latin writers of the Augustan 
age did not possess those materials, without which a 
trustworthy account of the infancy of the republic 
could not possibly be framed. Those writers own, 
indeed, that the chronicles to which they had access, 
were filled with battles that were never fought, and 
consuls that were never inaugurated ; and we have 
abundant proof, that, in these chronicles, events of the 
greatest importance, such as the issue of the war with 
Porsena, and the issue of the war with Brennus, were 
grossly misrepresented. Under these circumstances a 
wise man will look with great suspicion on the legend 



122 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

which has come down to us. He will, perhaps, be 
inclined to regard the princes who are said to have 
founded the civil and religious institutions of Rome, 
the son of Mars and the husband of Egeria, as mere 
mythological personages, of the same class with Per- 
seus and Ixion, As he draws nearer and nearer to 
the confines of authentic history, he will become less 
and less hard of belief. He will admit that the most 
important parts of the narrative have some foundation 
in truth. But he will distrust almost all the details, 
not only because they seldom rest on any solid evi- 
dence, but also because he will constantly detect in 
them, even when they are within the limits of physical 
possibility, that peculiar character, more easily under- 
stood than defined, which distinguishes the creations 
of the imagination from the realities of the world in 
which we live. 

The early history of Rome is indeed far more 
poetical than any thing else in Latin literature. The 
loves of the Vestal and tlfb God of War, the cradle 
laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she- 
wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratri- 
cide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, 
the fall of Hostus Hostilius, the struggle of Mettus 
Curtius through the marsh, the women rushing with 
torn raiment and dishevelled hair between their fathers 
and their husbands, the nightly meetings of Numa 
and the Nymph by the well in the sacred grove, the 
fight of the three Romans and the three Albans, the 
purchase of the Sibylline books, the crime of Tullia, 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 23 

the simulated madness of Brutus, the ambiguous reply 
of the Delphian oracle to the Tarquins, the wrongs 
of Lucretia, the heroic actions of Horatius Codes, of 
Scaevola, and of Cloelia, the battle of Regillus won by 
the aid of Castor and Pollux, the defence of Cremera, 
the touching story of Coriolanus, the still more touch- 
ing story of Virginia, the wild legend about the drain- 
ing of the Alban lake, the combat between Valerius 
Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, are among the many 
instances which will at once suggest themselves to 
every reader. 

In the narrative of Livy, who was a man of fine 
imagination, these stories retain much of their genuine 
character. Nor could even the tasteless Dionysius 
distort and mutilate them into mere prose. The 
poetry shines, in spite of him, through the dreary 
pedantry of his eleven books. It is discernible in the 
most tedious and in the most superficial modern works 
on the early times of Rome. It enlivens the dulness 
of the "Universal History," and gives a charm to the 
most meagre abridgments of Goldsmith. 

Even in the age of Plutarch, there were discerning 
men who rejected the popular account of the founda- 
tion of Rome, because that account appeared to them 
to have the air, not of a history, but of a romance or 
a drama. Plutarch, who was displeased at their in- 
credulity, had nothing better to say in reply to their 
arguments than that chance sometimes turns poet, 
and produces trains of events not to be distinguished 
from the most elaborate plots which are constructed 



124 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

by art.^ But though the existence of a poetical ele- 
ment in the early history of the Great City was de- 
tected so many years ago, the first critic who distinctly 
saw from what source that poetical element had been 
derived was James Perizonius, one of the most acute 
and learned antiquaries of the seventeenth century. 
His theory, which in his own days attracted little or 
no notice, was revived in the present generation by 
Niebuhr, a man who would have been the first writer 
of his time if his talent for communicating truths had 
borne any proportion to his talent for investigating 
them. That theory has been adopted by several emi- 
nent scholars of our own country, particularly by the 
Bishop of St. David's, by Professor Maiden, and by 
the lamented Arnold. It appears to be now generally 
received by men conversant with classical antiquity ; 
and indeed it rests on such strong proofs, both internal 
and external, that it will not be easily subverted. A 
popular exposition of this theory, and of the evidence 
by which it is supported, may not be without interest, 
even for readers who are unacquainted with the ancient 
languages. 

The Latin literature which has come down to us is 



1 'Yttotttoi' \i.kv ivioL<; earl to SpaixaTLKov Koi TrAacr^iaTwSes" ov Set 8e 
aTTKTTelv, TT)i' Tvxrjv bpi<ii/Ta<;, oicoi' TrotrjjUciTioi' Srj/jLiovpyo? ecm. — Phit. 
Rovi. vili. This remarkable passage has been more grossly misinterpreted 
than any other in the Greek language, where the sense was so obvious. The 
Latin version of Cruserius, the French version of Amyot, the old English 
version by several hands, and the later English version by Langhorne, are all 
equally destitute of every trace of the meaning of the original. None of the 
translators saw even that Troi'rj.aa is a poem. They ail render it an event. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 12$ 

of later date than the commencement of the second 
Punic War, and consists ahiiost exclusively of works 
fashioned on Greek models. The Latin metres, he- 
roic, elegiac, lyric, and dramatic, are of Greek origin. 
The best Latin epic poetry is the feeble echo of 
the Iliad and Odyssey. The best Latin eclogues are 
imitations of Theocritus. The plan of the most fin- 
ished didactic poem in the Latin tongue was taken 
from Hesiod. The Latin tragedies are bad copies of 
the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides. The 
Latin comedies are free translations from Demophilus, 
IMenander, and ApoUodorus. The Latin philosophy 
was borrowed, without alteration, from the " Portico " 
and the "Academy;" and the great Latin orators 
constantly proposed to themselves as patterns the 
speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias. 

But there was an earlier Latin literature, a literature 
truly Latin, which has wholly perished, which had, in- 
deed, almost wholly perished long before those whom 
we are in the habit of regarding as the greatest Latin 
writers w^ere born. That literature abounded with 
metrical romances, such as are found in every country 
vv'here there is much curiosity and intelligence, but 
litUe reading and writing. All human beings, not 
utterly savage, long for some information about past 
times, and are delighted by narratives which present 
pictures to the eye of the mind. But it is only in 
very enlightened communities that books are readily 
accessible. Metrical composition, therefore, which in 
a highly civilized nation is a mere luxury, is, in nations 



126 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

imperfectly civilized, almost a necessary of life, and is 
valued less on account of tlie pleasure which it gives to 
the ear, than on account of the help which it gives 
to the memory. A man who can invent or embellish 
an interesting story, and put it into a form which 
others may easily retain in their recollection, will 
always be highly esteemed by a people eager for 
amusement and information, but destitute of hbraries. 
Such is the origin of ballad-poetry, a species of com- 
position which scarcely ever fails to spring up and 
flourish in every society, at a certain point in the prog- 
ress towards refinement. Tacitus informs us that 
songs were the only memorials of the past which the 
ancient Germans possessed. We learn from Lucan, 
and from Ammianus Marcellinus, that the brave actions 
of the ancient Gauls were commemorated in the 
verses of bards. During many ages, and through 
many revolutions, minstrelsy retained its influence over 
both the Teutonic and the Celtic race. The ven- 
geance exacted by the spouse of Attila for the murder 
of Siegfried was celebrated in rhymes, of which Ger- 
many is still justly proud. The exploits of Athelstane 
were commemorated by the Anglo-Saxons, and those 
of Canute by the Danes, in rude poems, of which a 
few fragments have come down to us. The chants of 
the Welsh harpers preserved, through ages of darkness, 
a faint and doubtful memory of Arthur. In the High- 
lands of Scotland may still be gleaned some relics of 
the old songs about Cuthullin and Fingal. The long 
struggle of the Servians against the Ottoman power 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 27 

was recorded in lays full of martial spirit. We learn 
from Herrera, that, when a Peruvian Inca died, men 
of skill were appointed to celebrate him in verses, 
which all the people learned by heart, and sang in 
public on days of festival. The feats of Kurroglou, 
the great freebooter of Turkestan, recounted in ballads 
composed by himself, are known in every village of 
Northern Persia. Capt. Beechey heard the bards of 
the Sandwich Islands recite the heroic achievements 
of Tamehameha, the most illustrious of their kings. 
Mungo Park found in the heart of Africa a class of 
singing-men, the only annalists of their rude tribes, and 
heard them tell the story of the victory which Daniel, 
the negro prince of the JalofTs, won over Abdulkader, 
the Mussulman tyrant of Foota Torra. This species 
of poetry attained a high degree of excellence among 
the Castilians before they began to copy Tuscan pat- 
terns. It attained a still higher degree of excellence 
among the English and the Lowland Scotch during the 
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. But it 
reached its full perfection in ancient Greece ; for there 
can be no doubt that the great Homeric poems are 
generically ballads, though widely distinguished from 
all other ballads, and indeed from almost all other 
human compositions, by transcendent sublimity and 
beauty. 

As it is agreeable to general experience, that, at a 
certain stage in the progress of society, ballad-poetry 
should flourish, so is it also agreeable to general expe- 
rience, that, at a subsequent stage in the progress of 



128 READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

society, ballad-poetry should be undervalued and 
neglected. Knowledge advances ; manners change ; 
great foreign models of composition are studied and 
imitated. The phraseology of the old minstrels be- 
comes obsolete. Their versification, which, having 
received its laws only from the ear, abounds in irregu- 
larities, seems licentious and uncouth. Their simpli- 
city appears beggarly when compared with the quaint 
forms and gaudy coloring of such artists as Cowley and 
Gongora. The ancient lays, unjustly despised by the 
learned and polite, linger for a time in the memory of 
the vulgar, and are at length too often irretrievably 
lest. We cannot wonder that the ballads of Rome 
should have altogether disappeared, when we remem- 
ber how very narrowly, in spite of the invention of 
printing, those of our own country and those of Spain 
escaped the same fate. There is indeed litUe doubt 
that oblivion covers many English songs equal to any 
that were published by Bishop Percy, and many Span- 
ish songs as good as the best of those which have been 
so happily translated by Mr. Lockhart. Eighty years 
ago England possessed only one tattered copy of 
" Childe Waters and Sir Cauline," and Spain only one 
tattered copy of the noble poem of " The Cid." The 
snuff of a candle, or a mischievous dog, might in a 
moment have deprived the world forever of any of 
those fine compositions. Sir Walter Scott, who united 
to the fire of a great poet the minute curiosity and 
patient diligence of a great antiquary, was but just in 
time to save the precious reUcs of the " Minstrelsy of 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 1 29 

the Border." In Germany, the lay of the Nibelungs 
had been long utterly forgotten, when, in the eigh- 
teenth century, it was, for the first time, printed from 
a manuscript in the old library of a noble family. In 
truth, the only people who, through their whole pas- 
sage from simplicity to the highest civilization, never 
for a moment ceased to love and admire their old 
ballads, were the Greeks. 

That the early Romans should have had ballad- 
poetry, and that this poetry should have perished, is 
therefore not strange. It would, on the contrary, have 
been strange if these things had not come to pass ; 
and we should be justified in pronouncing them highly 
probable, even if we had no direct evidence on the 
subject. But we have direct evidence of unquestion- 
able authority. 

Ennius, who flourished in the time of the Second 
Punic War, was regarded in the Augustan age as the 
father of Latin poetry. He was, in truth, the father 
of the second school of Latin poetry, the only school 
of which the works have descended to us. But from 
Ennius himself we learn that there were poets who 
stood to him in the same relation in which the author 
of the romance of " Count Alarcos " stood to Gar- 
cilaso, or the author of the " Lytell Geste of Robyn 
Hode " to Lord Surrey. Ennius speaks of verses 
which tlie Fauns and the bards were wont to chant 
in the old time, hen none had yet studied the graces 
of speech, wh/ .1 none had yet climbed the peaks 
sacred to the i 'ddesses of Grecian song. " Where," 



130 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Cicero mournfully asks, " are those old verses 
now? " ^ 

Contemporary with Ennius was Quintus Fabius Pic- 
tor, the earliest of the Roman annalists. His account 
of the infancy and youth of Romulus and Remus has 
been preserved by Dionysius, and contains a very 
remarkable reference to the ancient Latin poetry. 
Fabius says, that, in his time, his countrymen were still 
in the habit of singing ballads about the Twins. 
*' Even in the hut of Faustulus," — so these old lays 
appear to have run, — " the children of Rhea and Mars 
were, in port and in spirit, not like unto swineherds or 
cowherds, but such that men might well guess them to 
be of the blood of kings and gods." ^ 

^ " Quid? Nostri versus ubi sunt? 

. . . ' Quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant. 

Cum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat. 

Nee dicti sludiosus erat.' " 

Briittis, xxii. 
The IMuses, it should be observed, are Greek divinities. The Italian god- 
desses of verse were the Camoense. At a later period, the appellations were 
used indiscriminately; but, in the age of Ennius, there was probably a distinc- 
tion. In the epitaph of Naevius, who was the representative of the old Italian 
school of poetry, the Camoense, not the Muses, are represented as grieving for 
the loss of their votary. The " Musarum scopuli " are evidently the peaks of 
Parnassus. 

Scaliger, In a note on Varro {De Lingua Lntiiia, lib. vi.), suggests, with 
great ingenuity, that the Fauns, who were represented by the superstition of 
later ages as a race of monsters, half gods and half brutes, may really have been 
a class of men who exercised in Latium, at a very remote period, the same 
functions which belonged to the Magians in Persia and to the bards in Gaul. 

2 Oi Se ai-fipw^ei'Te? yivovrci., Kara, re a^iu}(TLU /u.op</)^s fat (^poi-jjuxaTO? 
oyKov ov (Tuo(|>op/3ois kol /Sou/coAois ioLKoreg, aW' o'lous dv Tt's a^tcicreie tous 
€/c ^ac^lAeto^' re (pvvTa<; yepov^, Kal anh Saifxovoiv CTTTopa? yeveaOat j-ojixi^o- 
ixewov;, oj? i:/ toI(; Trarpioi? vfj-yoLi; vtto 'Fiafxaiwi' en »cal vvi' (fSerai. — Diofi. 
Hal. i. 79. This passage has sometimes been cited as if Dionysius had been 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 3 1 

Cato the Censor, who also Hved in the days of the 
Second Punic War, mentioned this lost literature in his 
lost work on the antiquities of his country. Many 
ages, he said, before his time, there were ballads in 
praise of illustrious men ; and these ballads it was the 



speaking in his own person, and had, Greek as he was, been so industrious or 
so fortunate as to discover some valuable remains of that early Latin poetry 
which the greatest Latin writers of his age regretted as hopelessly lost. Such 
a supposition is highly improbable; and, indeed, it seems clear from the con- 
text, that Dionysiiis,as Reiske and other editors evidently thought, was merely 
quoting from Fabius Pictor. The whole passage has the air of an extract 
from an ancient chronicle, and is introduced by the words, KoIctos ^iXv 
4>aj8to?, 6 ni/cTwp Aey6jU£fos, TyjSe 7pd(/>et. 

Another argument may be urged which seems to deserve consideration. 
The author of the passage in question mentions a thatched hut, which, in his 
time, stood between the summit of Mount Palatine and the Circus. This hut, 
he says, was built by Romulus, and was constantly kept in repair at the public 
charge, but never in any respect embellished. Now, in the age of Dionysius, 
there certainly was at Rome a thatched hut, said to have been that of Romu- 
his. But this hut, as we learn from Vitruvius, stood, not near the-Circus, but 
in the Capitol. i^Vit. ii. i.) If, therefore, we understand Dionysius to speak 
in his own person, we can reconcile his statement with that of Vitruvius, only 
by supposing that there were at Rome, in the Augustan age, two thatched 
huts, both believed to have been built by Romulus, and both carefully repaired 
and held in high honor. The objections to such a supposition seem to be 
strong. Neither Dionysius nor Vitruvius speaks of more than one such hut. 
Dio Cassius informs us that twice, during the long administration of Augustus, 
the hut of Romulus caught fire, (xlviii. 43, liv. 29.) Had there been two 
such huts, would he not have told us of which he spoke? An English histo- 
rian would hardly give an account of a fire at Queen's College without saying 
whether it was at Queen's College, Oxford, or at Queen's College, Cambridge, 
Marcus Seneca, Macrobius, and Conon, a Greek writer from whom Photius 
has made large extracts, mention only one hut of Romulus, that in the Capitol. 
{M. Seneca, Contr. i. 6; Macrobius, Sat. i. 15; Phothis, Bill. 1S6.) 
Ovid, Livy, Petronius, Valerius Maximus, Lucius .Seneca, and St. Jerome, 
mention only one hut of Romulus, without specifying the site. {Ovid. Fasti, 
iii. 183; Liv. v. 53; Petronius Fragin. ; Val. Max. iv. 4; L. Seticca, 
Consolatio ad Helvian ; D. Hieron. ad Paidinianuin de Didymo.) 

The whole difficulty is removed, if we suppose that Dionysius was merely 
quoting Fabius Pictor, Nothing is more probable thau that the cabin, which 



132 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

fashion for the guests at banquets to sing in turn while 
the piper played. " Would," exclaims Cicero, " that 
we still had the old ballads of which Cato speaks ! " ^ 

Valerius Maximus gives us exactly similar informa- 
tion, without mentioning his authority, and obser\^es 
that the ancient Roman ballads were probably of more 
benefit to the young than all the lectures of the Athe- 
nian schools, and that to the influence of the national 
poetry were to be ascribed the virtues of such men as 
Camillus and Fabricius.^ 



in tlie time of Fabius stood near the Circus, might, long before the age of 
Augustus, have been transported to the Capitol, as the place fittest, by reason 
both of its safety and of its sanctity, to contain so precious a relic. 

The language of Plutarch confirms this hypothesis. He describes, with 
great precision, the spot where Romulus dwelt, on the slope of Mount Pala- 
tine, leading to the Circus; but he says not a word implying that the dwelling 
was still to be seen there. Indeed, his expressions imply that it was no longer 
there The evidence of Solinus is still more to the point. He, like Plutarch, 
describes the spot where Romulus had resided, and says expressly that the 
hut had been there, but that in his time it ^vas there no longer. The site, it is 
certain, was well remembered, and probably retaiued its old name, as Charing 
Cross and the Haymarket have done. This is probably the explanation of the 
words, " casa Romuli," in Victor's description of the Tenth Region of Rome, 
under Valentinian. 

^ Cicero refers t^vice to this important passage in Cato's Antiquities: 
" Gravissimus auctor in Originibus dixit Cato, morem apud majores hunc 
epularum fuisse, lit deinceps, qui accubarent, canerent ad tibiam clarorum 
virorum laudes atque virtutes. Ex quo perspicuum est, et cantus tum fuisse 
rescriptos vocum sonis, et carmina." — Tnsc. Qiicest. iv. 2. Again: " Uti- 
nam exstarent ilia carmina, qua;, multis saeculis ante suam setatem, in epulis 
esse cantitata a singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus, in Originibus 
scriptum reliquit Cato." — Brnt7is, xix, 

2 " Majores natu in conviviis ad tibias egregia superiorum opera carmine 

comprehensa pangebant, quo ad ea imitanda juventutem alacriorem redderent 

. Quas Athenas, quam scholam, quae alicnigena studia huic domesticae 

disciplinse praitulerim? Inde oriebantur Camilli, Scipiones, Fabricii, Mar- 

celli, Fabii." — Val. Max. ii. i. 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME, 1 33 

Varro, whose authority on all questions connected 
with the antiquities of his country is entitled to the 
greatest respect, tells us that at banquets it was once 
the fashion for boys to sing, sometimes with and some- 
times without instrumental music, ancient ballads in 
praise of men of former times. These young per- 
formers, he observes, were of unblemished character, 
a circumstance which he probably mentioned because, 
among the Greeks, and indeed in his time among the 
Romans also, the morals of singing-boys were in no 
high repute.^ 

The testimony of Horace, though given incidentally, 
confirms the statements of Cato, Valerius Maximus, 
and Varro. The poet predicts, that, under the peace- 
ful administration of Augustus, the Romans will, over 
their full goblets, sing to the pipe, after the fashion of 
their fathers, the deeds of brave captains, and the 
ancient legends touching the origin of the city.^ 

The proposition, then, that Rome had ballad-poetry 
is not merely in itself highly probable, but is fully 
proved by direct evidence of the greatest weight. 

^ " In conviviis pueri modesti ut cantarent carmina antiqua, in quibus 
laudes erant majorum, et assa voce, et cum tibicine." Nonius, Assa voce pro 
sola. 

2 " Nosque et profestis lucibus et sacris. 
Inter jocosi munera Liberi, 

Cum prole matronisque nostris. 
Rite Deos prius apprecati, 
Virtute functos, more patrum, duces, 
Lydis remixto carmine tibiis, 

Trojamque, et Anchisen, et almae 
Progenieni Veneris canemus." 

Carm. iv, 15. 



134 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

This proposition being established, it becomes easy 
to understand why the early history of the city is un- 
like almost every thing else in Latin literature, native 
where almost every thing else is borrowed, imagina- 
tive where almost every thing else is prosaic. We can 
scarcely hesitate to pronounce that the magnificent, 
pathetic, and truly national legends, which present so 
striking a contrast to all that surrounds them, are 
broken and defaced fragments of that early poetry 
which even in the age of Cato the Censor had be- 
come antiquated, and of which Tully had never heard 
a line. 

That this poetry should have been suffered to perish 
will not appear strange when we consider how com- 
plete was the triumph of the Greek genius over the 
public mind of Italy. It is probable, that, at an early 
period. Homer and Herodotus furnished some hints 
to the Latin minstrels : ^ but it was not till after the 
war with Pyrrhus that the poetry of Rome began to 
put off its old Ausonian character. The transforma- 
tion was soon consummated. The conquered, says 
Horace, led captive the conquerors. It was precisely 
at the time at which the Roman people rose to unri- 
valled political ascendency that they stooped to pass 
under the intellectual yoke. It was precisely at the 
time at which the sceptre departed from Greece, that 
the empire of her language and of her arts became 
universal and despotic. The revolution, indeed, was 

* See the preface to the lay of the Battle of Regillus. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 35 



aot effected without a struggle. Naevius seems to have 
been the last of the ancient line of poets. Ennius was 
the founder of a new dynasty. Naevius celebrated the 
First Punic War in Saturnian verse, the old national 
verse of Italy.^ Ennius sang the Second Punic War 

^ Cicero speaks highly in more than one place of this poem of Naevius: 
Ennius sneered at it, and stole from it. 

As to the Saturnian measure, see Hermann's Eletneiita Doctrince Me- 
tricce, iii. 9. 

The Saturnian line, according to the grammarians, consisted of two parts. 
The first was a catalectic dimeter iambic: the second was composed of three 
trochees. But the license taken by the early Latin poets seems to have been 
almost boundless. The most perfect Saturnian line which has been preserved 
was the work, not of a professional artist, but of an amateur: — 
" Dabunt malum Metelli Najvio poetse." 

There has been much difference of opinion among learned men respecting 
the history of this measure. That it is the same with a Greek measure used 
by Archilochus is indisputable. (^Bentlcy Phalaris, xi.) But in spite of the 
authority of Terentianus Maurus, and of the still higher authority of Bentley, 
we may venture to doubt whether the coincidence was not fortuitous. We 
constantly find the same rude and simple numbers in different countries, under 
circumstances which make it impossible to suspect that there has been imita- 
tion on either side. Bishop Heber heard the children of a village in Bengal 
singing *' Radha, Radha," to the tune of " My boy Billy." Neither the Cas- 
tilian nor the German minstrels of the Middle Ages owed any thing to Paros or 
to ancient Rome. Yet both the poem of the Cid and the poem of the Nibe- 
lungs contain many Saturnian verses; as, — 

" Estas nuevas a mio Cid eran venidas." 

" A mi lo dicen; a ti dan las orejadas." 

" Man mohte michel wunder von Sifride sagen." 

" Wa ich den Kiinic vinde daz sol man mir sagen." 

Indeed, there cannot be a more perfect Saturnian line than one which is sung 

in every English nursery, — 

" The queen was in her parlor, eating bread and honey; " 
yet the author of this line, we may be assured, borrowed nothing from either 
Naevius or Archilochus. 

On the other hand, it is by no means improbable that, two or three hun- 
dred years before the time of Ennius, some Latin minstrel may have visited 



136 



READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 



in numbers borrowed from the Iliad. The elder poet, 
in the epitaph which he wrote for himself, and which 



Sybaris or Crotona, may have heard some verses of Archilochus sung, may 
have been pleased with the metre, and may have introduced it at Rome. 
Thus much is certain, that the Saturnian measure, if not a native of Italy, 
was at least so early and so completely naturalized there, that its foreign origin 
was forgotten. 

Bentley says, indeed, that the Saturnian measure was first brought from 
Greece into Italy by Naevius. But this is merely obiter dictum, to use a 
phrase common in our courts of law, and would not have been deliberately 
maintained by that incomparable critic, whose memory is held in reverence 
by all lovers of learning. The arguments which might be brought against 
Bentley's assertion — for it is mere assertion, supported by no evidence — are 
innumerable. A few will suffice. 

1. Bentley's assertion is opposed to the testimony of Ennius. Ennius 
sneered at Nsevius for writing on the First Punic War in verses such as the 
old Italian bards used before Greek literature had been studied. Now, the 
poem of Nsevius was in Saturnian verse. Is it possible that Ennius ceuld have 
used such expressions if the Saturnian verse had been just imported from 
Greece for the first time ? 

2. Bentley's assertion is opposed to the testimony of Horace. " When 
Greece," says Horace, " introduced her arts into oui uncivilized country, 
those rugged Saturnian numbers passed away." Would Horace have said 
this if the Saturnian numbers had been imported from Greece just before the 
hexameter ? 

3. Bendey's assertion is opposed to the testimony of Festus and of Aurelius 
Victor, both of whom positively say that the most ancient prophecies attributed 
to the Fauns were in Saturnian verse. 

4. Bendey's assertion is opposed to the testimony of Terentianus Maurus, 
to whom he has himself appealed. Terentianus Maurus does indeed say that 
the Saturnian measure, though believed by the Romans from a very early 
period (" credidit vetustas") to be of Italian invention, was really borrowed 
from the Greeks. But Terentianus Maurus does not say that it was first 
borrowed by Nsevius. Nay, the expressions used by Terentianus Maurus 
clearly imply the contrary; for how could the Romans have believed, from a 
very early period, that this measure was the indigenous production of Latium, 
if it was really brought over from Greece in an age of intelligence and liberal 
curiosity, in the age which gave birth to Ennius, Plautus, Cato the Censor, 
and other distinguished writers? If Bentley's assertion were correct, there 
could have been no more doubt at Rome about the Greek ori.n:iii of the Satur- 
nian measure than about the Greek origin of hexameters or Sapphics. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 37 

IS a fine specimen of the early Roman diction and ver- 
sification, plaintively boasted that the Latin language 
had died with him.' Thus what to Horace appeared 
to be the first faint dawn of Roman literature, appeared 
to Naevius to be its hopeless setting. In truth, one 
literature was setting, and another dawning. 

The victory of the foreign taste was decisive ; and, 
indeed, we can hardly blame the Romans for turning 
away with contempt from the rude lays which had de- 
lighted their fathers, and giving their whole admiration 
to the immortal productions of Greece. The national 
romances, neglected by the great and the refined 
whose education had been finished at Rhodes or 
Athens, continued, it may be supposed, during some 
generations to delight the vulgar. While Virgil, in 
hexameters of exquisite modulation, described the 
sports of rustics, those rustics were still singing their 
wild Saturnian ballads.^ It is not improbable, that, at 
the time when Cicero lamented the irreparable loss of 
the poems mentioned by Cato, a search among the 
nooks of the Apennines, as active as the search which 
wSir Walter Scott made among the descendants of the 
moss-troopers of Liddesdale, might have brought to 
light many fine remains of ancient minstrelsy. No 
such search was made. The Latin ballads perished 
forever. Yet discerning critics have thought th?ct they 
could still perceive in the early history of Rome nu- 
merous fragments of this lost poetry ; as the traveller 

1 Aulas Gellius, Noctes Atlicse, i. 24. 2 See Seivius, in Georg. ii. 385. 



138 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

on classic ground sometimes finds, built into the heavy 
wall of a fort or convent, a pillar rich with acanthus- 
leaves, or a frieze where the Amazons and Bacchanals 
seem to live. The theatres and temples of the Greek 
and the Roman were degraded into the quarries of the 
Turk and the Goth. Even so did the ancient Satur- 
nian poetry become the quarry in which a crowd of 
orators and annalists found the materials for their 
prose. 

It is not difficult to trace the process by which the 
old songs were transmuted into the form which they 
now wear. Funeral panegyric and chronicle appear 
to have been the intermediate links which connected 
the lost ballads with the histories now extant. From 
a very early period, it was the usage that an oration 
should be pronounced over the remains of a noble 
Roman. The orator, as we learn from Polybius, was 
expected, on such an occasion, to recapitulate all the 
services which the ancestors of the deceased had, 
from the earhest time, rendered to the commonwealth. 
There can be little doubt that the speaker on whom 
this duty was imposed would make use of all the 
stories suited to his purpose which were to be found 
in the popular lays. There can be as little doubt that 
the family of an eminent man would preserve a copy 
of the speech which had been pronounced over his 
corpse. The compilers of the early chronicles would 
have recourse to these speeches, and the great liisto- 
rians of a later period would have recourse to the 
chronicles. 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 39 

It may be worth while to select a particular story, 
and to trace its probable progress through these 
stages. The description of the migration of the Fa- 
bian house to Cremera is one of the finest of the 
many fine passages which lie thick in the earlier books 
of Livy. The consul, clad in his military garb, stands 
in the vestibule of his house, marshalling his clan, 
three hundred and six fighting men, all of the same 
proud patrician blood, all worthy to be attended by 
the fasces, and to command the legions. A sad and 
anxious retinue of friends accompanies the adventurers 
through the streets, but the voice of lamentation is 
drowned by the shouts of admiring thousands. As 
the procession passes the Capitol, prayers and vows 
are poured forth, but in vain. The devoted band, 
leaving Janus on the right, marches to its doom, 
through the Gate of Evil Luck. After achieving 
high deeds of valor against overwhelming numbers, all 
perish save one child, the stock from which the great 
Fabian race was destined again to spring, for the safety 
and glory of the commonwealth. That this fine ro- 
mance, the details of which are so full of poetical 
truth, and so utterly destitute of all show of historical 
truth, came originally from some lay which had often 
been sung with great applause at banquets, is in the 
highest degree probable. Nor is it difficult to jmagine 
a mode in which the transmission might have taken 
place. The celebrated Quintus Fabius Maximus, who 
died about twenty years before the First Punic War, 
and more than forty years before Ennius was born, is 



I40 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

said to have been interred with extraordinary pomp. 
In the eulogy pronounced over his body, all the great 
exploits of his ancestors were doubtless recounted and 
exaggerated. If there were then extant songs which 
gave a vivid and touching description of an event, the 
saddest and the most glorious in the long history of the 
Fabian house, nothing could be more natural than 
that the panegyrist should borrow from such songs 
their finest touches, in order to adorn his speech. A 
few generations later, the songs would perhaps be for- 
gotten, or remembered only by shepherds and vine' 
dressers. But the speech would certainly be pre- 
served in the archives of the Fabian nobles. Fabius 
Pictor would be well acquainted with a document so 
interesting to his personal feelings, and would insert 
large extracts from it in his rude chronicle. That 
chronicle, as we know, was the oldest to which Livy 
had access. Livy would at a glance distinguish the 
bold strokes of the forgotten poet from the dull and 
feeble narrative by which they were surrounded, would 
retouch them with a delicate and powerful pencil, and 
would make them immortal. 

That this might happen at Rome can scarcely be ^ 
doubted ; for something very like this has happened 
in several countries, and, among others, in our own. 
Perhaps the theory of Perizonius cannot be better 
illustrated than by showing that what he supposes to 
have taken place in ancient times, has, beyond all 
doubt, taken place in modern times. I 

*' History," says Hume with the utmost gravity. 



LAVS OF AA'CTENT ROME. I4I 

"has preserved some instances of Edgar's amours, 
from which, as from a specimen, we may form a con- 
jecture of the rest." He then tells very agreeably 
the stories of Elfleda and Elfrida, two stories which 
have a most suspicious air of romance, and which, 
indeed, greatly resemble, in their general character, 
some of the legends of early Rome. He cites as his 
authority for these two tales, the chronicle of William 
of Malmesbury, who lived in the time of King 
Stephen. The great majority of readers suppose that 
the device by which Elfleda was substituted for her 
young mistress, the artifice by which Athelwold ob- 
tained the hand of Elfrida, the detection of that 
artifice, the hunting-party and the vengeance of the 
amorous king, are things about which there is no more 
doubt than about the execution of Anne Boleyn, or 
the slitting of Sir John Coventry's nose. But when 
we turn to William of Malmesbury, we find that 
Hume, in his eagerness to relate these pleasant fables, 
has overlooked one very important circumstance. Wil- 
liam does indeed tell both the stories ; but he gives us 
distinct notice that he does not warrant their truth, 
and that they rest on no better authority than that of 
ballads.^ 

Such is the way in which these two well-known tales 
have been handed down. They originally appeared in 



' " Infamias quas post dicam magis respersenint cantilenae." Edgar ap- 
pears to have been most mercilessly treated in the Anglo-Saxon ballads. He 
was the favorite of the monks, and the monks and minstrels were at deadly- 
feud. 



142 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

a poetical form. They found their way from ballads 
into an old chronicle. The ballads perished : the 
chronicle remained. A great historian, some centu- 
ries after the ballads had been altogether forgotten, 
consulted the chronicle. He was struck by the lively 
coloring of these ancient fictions ; he transferred them 
to his pages ; and thus we find inserted, as unques- 
tionable facts, in a narrative which is likely to last as 
long as the English tongue, the inventions of some 
minstrel whose works were probably never committed 
to writing, whose name is buried in oblivion, and 
whose dialect has become obsolete. It must, then, be 
admitted to be possible, or rather highly probable, that 
the stories of Romulus and Remus, and of the Horatii 
and Curiatii, may have had a similar origin. 

Castilian literature will furnish us with another par- 
allel case. Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, 
tells the story of the ill-starred marriage which the 
king Don Alonso brought about between the heirs of 
Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid. The Cid 
bestowed a princely dower on his sons-in-law. But 
the young men were base and proud, cowardly and 
cruel. They were tried in danger, and found wanting. 
They fled before the Moors ; and once, when a lion 
broke out of his den, they ran and crouched in an 
unseemly hiding-place. They knew that they were de- 
spised, and took counsel how they might be avenged. 
They parted from their father-in-law with many signs 
of love, and set forth on a journey with Dona Elvira 
and Doiia Sol. In a solitary place the bridegrooms 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 43 

seized their brides, stripped them, scourged them, and 
departed, leaving them for dead. But one of the 
house of Bivar, suspecting foul play, had followed the 
travellers in disguise. The ladies were brought back 
safe to the house of their father. Complaint was 
made to the king. It was adjudged by the Cortes that 
the dower given by the Cid should be returned, and 
that the heirs of Carrion, together with one of their 
kindred, should do battle against three knights of the 
party of the Cid. The guilty youths would have 
declined the combat, but all their shifts were vain. 
They were vanquished in the lists, and forever dis- 
graced ; while their injured wives were s6ught in mar- 
riage by great princes.^ 

Some Spanish writers have labored to show, by an 
examination of dates and circumstances, that this story 
is untrue. Such confutation was surely not needed, 
for the narrative is on the face of it a romance. How 
it found its way into Mariana's history is quite clear. 
He acknowledges his obligations to the ancient chron- 
icles, and had doubtless before him the " Cronica del 
famoso Cavallero Cid Ruy Diez Campeador," which 
had been printed as early as the year 1552. He little 
suspected that all the most striking passages in this 
chronicle were copied from a poem of the twelfth cen- 
tury, — ■ a poem of which the language and versifica- 
tion had long been obsolete, but which glowed with no 
common portion of the fire of the Iliad. Yet such 

* Mariana, lib. x. cap. 4, 



144 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

was the fact. More than a century and a half after 
the death of Mariana, this venerable ballad, of which 
one imperfect copy on parchment, four hundred years 
old, had been preserved at Bivar, was for the first time 
printed. Then it was found that every interesting cir- 
cumstance of the story of the heirs of Carrion was de- 
rived by the eloquent Jesuit from a song of which he 
had never heard, and which was composed by a min- 
strel whose very name had long been forgotten.' 

Such, or nearly such, appears to have been the pro- 
cess by which the lost ballad-poetry of Rome was 
transformed into history. To reverse that process, to 
transform some portions of early Roman history back 
into the poetry out of which they were made, is the 
object of this work. 

In the following poems the author speaks, not in his 
own person, but in the persons of ancient minstrels 
who know only what a Roman citizen, born three or 
four hundred years before the Christian era, may be 
supposed to have known, and who are in no wise above 
the passions and prejudices of their age and nation. 
To these imaginary poets must be ascribed some blun- 
ders which are so obvious that it is unnecessary to 
point them out. The real blunder would have been 
to represent these old poets as deeply versed in gen- 
eral history, and studious of chronological accuracy. 



^ See the account which Sanchez gives of the Bivar manuscript in the 
first vokime of the Coleccio7i de Poesias Castellanas anteriores al Siglo 
XV. Part of the story of the lords of Carrion, in the poem of the Cid, has 
been translated by Mr. Frere in a manner above all praise. 



\j 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 45 

To them must also be attributed the illiberal sneers at 
the Greeks, the furious party-spirit, the contempt for 
the arts of peace, the love of war for its own sake, the 
ungenerous exultation over the vanquished, which the 
reader will sometimes observe. To portray a Roman 
of the age of Camillus or Curius as superior to na- 
tional antipathies, as mourning over the devastation 
and slaughter by which empire and triumphs were to 
be won, as looking on human suffering with the sym- 
pathy of Howard, or as treating conquered enemies 
with the delicacy of the Black Prince, would be to 
violate all dramatic propriety. The old Romans had 
some great virtues, — fortitude, temperance, veracity, 
spirit to resist oppression, respect for legitimate au- 
thority, fidelity in the. observing of contracts, disinter- 
estedness, ardent patriotism ; but Christian charity and 
chivalrous generosity were alike unknown to them. 

It would have been obviously improper to mimic 
the manner of any particular age or country. Some- 
thing has been borrowed, however, from our own old 
1 ballads, and more from Sir Walter Scott, the great re- 
) storer of our ballad-poetry. To the Iliad still greater 
• obligations are due ; and those obligations have been 
^ contracted with the less hesitation, because there is 
reason to believe that some of the old Latin minstrels 
' really had recourse to that inexhaustible store of poet- 
' ical images. 

It would have been easy to swell this little volume 
' to a very considerable bulk, by appending notes filled 
' with quotations : but to a learned reader such notes 



146 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

are not necessary ; for an unlearned reader they would 
have little mterest : and the judgment passed both 
by the learned and by the unlearned on a work of the 
imagination will always depend much more on the gen- 
eral character and spirit of such a work than on minute 
details. 



i 



\ 



i 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. I47 



HORATIUS. 



There can be little doubt that among those parts of 
early Roman history which had a poetical origin was 
the legend of Horatius Codes. We have several ver- 
sions of the story, and these versions differ from each 
other in points of no small importance. Polybius, there 
is reason to believe, heard the tale recited over the 
remains of some consul or praetor descended from 
the old Horatian patricians ; for he introduces it as a 
specimen of the narratives with which the Romans 
were in the habit of embellishing their funeral oratory. 
It is remarkable, that, according to him, Horatius de- 
fended the bridge alone, and perished in the waters. 
According to the chronicles which Livy and Dionysius 
followed, Horatius had two companions, swam safe to 
shore, and was loaded with honors and rewards. 

These discrepancies are easily explained. Our own 
literature, indeed, will furnish an exact parallel to what 
may have taken place at Rome. It is highly probable 
that the memory of the war of Porsena was preserved 
i3y compositions much resembling the two ballads which 
stand first in the " Rehcs of Ancient English Poetry." 
In both those ballads, the English, commanded by the 
Percy, fight with the Scots, commanded by the Doug- 

3 



148 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

las. In one of the ballads, the Douglas is killed by a 
nameless English archer, and the Percy by a Scottish 
spearman : in the other, the Percy slays the Douglas 
in single combat, and is himself made prisoner. In 
the former, Sir Hugh Montgomery is shot through the 
heart by a Northumbrian bowman : in the latter he is 
taken, and exchanged for the Percy. Yet both the 
ballads relate to the same event, and that an event 
which probably took place within the memory of per- 
sons who were alive when both the ballads were made. 
One of the minstrels says, — 

"Old men that knowen the grounde well yenoughe 
Call it the battell of Otterburn : 
At Otterburn began this spurne 
Upon a monnyn day. 
Ther was the dougghte Doglas slean : 
The Perse never went away." 

The Other poet sums up the event in the following 
lines : — \ 

" Thys fraye bygan at Otterborne 

Bytwene the nyghte and the day : 

Ther the Dowglas lost hys lyfe, 

And the Percy was lede away." j 

It is by no means unlikely that there were two ok 
Roman lays about the defence of the bridge ; and that 
while the story which Livy has transmitted to us waj 
preferred by the multitude, the other, which ascribec 
the whole glory to Horatius alone, may have been th' 
favorite with the Horatian house. 



k 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. I49 

The following ballad is supposed to have been made 
about a hundred and twenty years after the war which 
it celebrates, and just before the taking of Rome by 
the Gauls. The author seems to have been an honest 
citizen, proud of the military glory of his country, sick 
of the disputes of factions, and much given to pining 
after good old times which had never really existed. 
The allusion, however, to the partial manner in which 
the public lands were allotted, could proceed only from 
a plebeian ; and the allusion to the fraudulent sale of 
spoils marks the date of the poem, and shows that the 
poet shared in the general discontent with which the 
proceedings of Camillus, after the taking of Veil, were 
regarded. 

The penultimate syllable of the name Porsena has 
been shortened in spite of the authority of Niebuhr, 
who pronounces, without assigning any ground for his 
opinion, that Martial was guilty of a decided blunder 
in the line, — 

" Hanc spectare manum Porsena non potuit." 

It is not easy to understand how any modem scholar, 
whatever his attainments may be, — and those of 
Niebuhr were undoubtedly immense, — can venture 
to pronounce that Martial did not know the quantity 
of a word which he must have uttered, and heard 
uttered, a hundred times before he left school. Nie- 
buhr seems also to have forgotten that Martial has 
fellow-culprits to keep him in countenance. Horace 



150 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

has committed the same decided blunder j for he gives 
us, as a pure iambic Une, — 

** Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenae manus." 

Silius Itahcus has repeatedly offended in the same 
way, as when he says, — 

" Cernitur effugiens ardentem Porsena dextram : " 

and again, — 

" Clusinum valgus, cum, Porsena magne, jubebas." 

A modern writer may be content to err in such com- 
pany. 

Niebuhr's supposition that each of the three defend- 
ers of the bridge was the representative of one of the 
three patrician tribes is both ingenious and probable, 
and has been adopted in the following poem : — 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 5 1 



HORATIUS. 

A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCDC. 



Lars Porsena of Clusium 

By the Nine Gods he swore 
That the great house of Tarquin 

Should suffer wrong no more. 
By the Nine Gods he swore it, 

And named a trysting day, 
And bade his messengers ride forth. 
East and west and south and north, 

To summon his array. 



n. 

East and west and south and north 

The messengers ride fast, 
And tower and town and cottage 

Have heard the trumpet's blast. 
Shame on the false Etruscan 

Who lingers in his home 
When Porsena of Clusium 

Is on the march for Rome ! 



152 READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

III. 

The horsemen and the footmen 

Are pouring in amain 
From many a stately market-place, 

From many a fruitful plain ; 
From many a lonely hamlet, 

Which, hid by beech and pine. 
Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest 

Of purple Apennine ; 

IV. 

From lordly Volaterrge, 

Where scowls the far-famed hold 
Piled by the hands of giants 

For godlike kings of old ; 
From seagirt Populonia, 

Whose sentinels descry 
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops 

Fringing the southern sky ; 



From the proud mart of Pisae, 

Queen of the western waves, 
Where ride Massilia's triremes, 

Heavy with fair-haired slaves ; 
From where sweet Clanis wanders 

Through corn and vines and flowers ; 
From where Cortona lifts to heaven 

Her diadem of towers. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 53 

VI. 

Tall are the oaks whose acorns 

Drop in dark Auser's rill ; 
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs 

Of the Ciminian hill ; 
Beyond all streams Clitumnus 

Is to the herdsman dear ; 
Best of all pools the fowler loves 

The great Volsinian mere. 

VII. 

But now no stroke of woodman 

Is heard by Auser's rill ; 
No hunter tracks the stag's green path 

Up the Ciminian hill ; 
Unwatched along Clitumnus 

Grazes the milk-white steer ; 
Unharmed the water-fowl may dip 

In the Volsinian mere. 

vin. 

The harvests of Arretium 

This year, old men shall reap ; 
This year, young boys in Umbro 

Shall plunge the struggling sheep ; 
And in the vats of Luna 

This year the must shall foam 
Round the white feet of laughing girls 

Whose sires have marched to Rome. 



154 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

rx. 

There be thirty chosen prophets, 

The wisest of the land, 
Who alway by Lars Porsena 

Both morn and evening stand : 
Evening and mom the Thirty 

Have turned the verses o'er, 
Traced from the right on hnen white 

By mighty seers of yore. 



And with one voice the Thirty 

Have their glad answer given : 
" Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena, 

Go forth, beloved of Heaven 3 
Go, and return in glory 

To Clusium's royal dome. 
And hang round Nurscia's altars 

The golden shields of Rome.'* 

XI. 

And now hath every city 

Sent up her tale of men : 
The foot are fourscore thousand, 

The horse are thousands ten. 
Before the gates of Sutrium 

Is met the great array. 
A proud man was Lars Porsena 

Upon the trysting day. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 55 

xn. 

For all the Etruscan armies 

Were ranged beneath his eye, 
And many a banished Roman, 

And many a stout ally j 
And with a mighty fojlowing 

To join the muster came 
The Tusculan Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name. 

xm. 

But by the yellow Tiber 

Was tumult and affright : 
From all the spacious champaign 

To Rome men took their flight. 
A mile around the city, 

The throng stopped up the ways : 
A fearful sight it was to see 

Through two long nights and days. 

XIV. 

For aged folks on crutches, 

And women great with child, 
And mothers sobbing over babes 

That clung to them and smiled, 
And sick men borne in litters 

High on the necks of slaves. 
And troops of sunburned husbandmen 

With reaping-hooks and staves, 



156 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

XV. 

And droves of mules and asses 

Laden with skins of wine, 
And endless flocks of goats and sheep, 

And endless herds of kine, 
And endless trains of wagons 

That creaked beneath the weight 
Of corn-sacks and of household goods, 

Choked every roaring gate. 

XVI. 

Now, from the rock Tarpeian, 

Could the wan burghers spy 
The line of blazing villages 

Red in the midnight sky. 
The Fathers of the city. 

They sat all night and day ; 
For every hour some horseman came 

With tidings of dismay. 

XVII. 

To eastward and to westward 

Have spread the Tuscan bands : 
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote 

In Crustumerium stands. 
Verbenna dov/n to Ostia 

Hath wasted all the plain : 
Astur hath stormed Janiculum, 

And the stout guards are slain. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 157 

XVIII. 

I wis, in all the Senate, 

There was no heart so bold, 
But sore it ached, and fast it beat, 

When that ill news was told. 
Forthwith up rose the Consul, 

Up rose the Fathers all : 
In haste they girded up their gowns. 

And hied them to the wall. 

XIX. 

They held a council, standing 

Before the River- Gate : 
Short time was there, ye well may guess, 

For musing or debate. 
Out spake the Consul roundly : 

" The bridge must straight go down ; 
For, since Janiculum is lost. 

Naught else can save the town." 

XX. 

Just then a scout came flying, 

All wild with haste and fear : 
'' To arms ! to arms ! Sir Consul : 

Lars Porsena is here." 
On the low hills to westward 

The Consul fixed his eye, 
And saw the swarthy storm of dust 

Rise fast along the sky. 



1 5 8 READINGS FROM MA CA ULA V. 

XXI. 

And nearer fast, and nearer, 

Doth the red whirlwind come ; 
And louder still, and still more loud, 
From underneath that rolling cloud, 
Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, 

The trampling and the hum. 
And plainly, and more plainly, 

Now through the gloom appears, 
Far to left, and far to right, 
In broken gleams of dark-blue light, 
The long array of helmets bright. 

The long array of spears. 

XXII. 

And plainly, and more plainly, 

Above that glimmering line, 
Now might ye see the banners 

Of twelve fair cities shine ; 
But the banner of proud Clusium 

Was highest of them all. 
The terror of the Umbrian, 

The terror of the Gaul. 

XXIII. 

And plainly, and more plainly, 
Now might the burghers know. 

By port and vest, by horse and crest, 
Each warlike Lucumo. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 59 

There Cilnius of Arretium 

On his fleet roan was seen ; 
And Astur of the fourfold shield, 
Girt with the brand none else may wield ; 
Tolumnius with the belt of gold, 
And dark Verbenna from the hold 

By reedy Thrasymene. 



XXIV. 

Fast by the royal standard, 

O'erlooking all the war, 
Lars Porsena of Clusium 

Sat in his ivory car. 
By the right wheel rode Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name ; 
And by the left false Sextus, 

That wrought the deed of shame. 



XXV. 

But when the face of Sextus 

Was seen among the foes, 
A yell that rent the firmament 

From all the town arose. 
On the housetops was no woman 

But spat towards him, and hissed ; 
No child but screamed out curses, 

And shook its little fist. 



l60 READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

XXVI. 

But the Consul's brow was sad, 

And the Consul's speech was low ; 
And darkly looked he at the wall, 

And darkly at the foe. 
" Their van will be upon us 

Before the bridge goes down ; 
And if they once may win the bridge, 

What hope to save the town?" 

xxvn. 

Then out spake brave Horatius, 

The Captain of the Gate : 
" To every man upon this earth. 

Death cometh soon or late. 
And how can man die better 

Than facing fearful odds 
For the ashes of his fathers, 

And the temples of his gods, 

XXVIII. 

'* And for the tender mother 

Who dandled him to rest, 
And for the wife who nurses 

His baby at her breast, 
And for the holy maidens 

Who feed the eternal flame. 
To save them from false Sextus 

That wrought the deed of shame ? 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. l6l 

XXIX. 

" Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, 

With all the speed ye may : 
I, with two more to help me. 

Will hold the foe in play. 
In yon strait path a thousand 

May well be stopped by three. 
Now, who will stand on either hand. 

And keep the bridge with me? " 

XXX. 

Then out spake Spurius Lartius, — 

A Ramnian proud was he, — 
" Lo, I will stand at thy right hand. 

And keep the bridge with thee." 
And out spake strong Herminius, — 

Of Titian blood was he, — 
" I will abide on thy left side, 

And keep the bridge with thee." 

XXXI. 

'^ Horatius," quoth the Consul, 

" As thou sayest, so let it be." 
And straight against that great array 

Forth went the dauntless Three. 
For Romans in Rome's quarrel 

Spared neither land nor gold, 
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 

In the brave days of old. 



1 62 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

XXXII. 

Then none was for a party ; 

Then all were for the State ; 
Then the great man helped the poor, 

And the poor man loved the great ; 
Then lands were fairly portioned ; 

Then spoils were fairly sold : 
The Romans were like brothers 

In the brave days of old. 

XXXIII. 

Now Roman is to Roman 

More hateful than a foe ; 
And the Tribunes beard the high, 

And the Fathers grind the low. 
As we wax hot in faction. 

In battle we wax cold ; 
Wherefore men fight not as they fought 

In the brave days of old. 

xxxrv. 

Now, while the Three were tightening 

Their harness on their backs, 
The Consul was the foremost man 

To take in hand an axe. 
And Fathers mixed with commons 

Seized hatchet, bar, and crow. 
And smote upon the planks above, 

And loosed the props below. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 1 63 

XXXV. 

Meanwhile the Tuscan army, 

Right glorious to behold, 
Corne flashing back the noonday light. 
Rank behind rank, like surges bright 

Of a broad sea of gold. 
Four hundred trumpets sounded 

A peal of warlike glee. 
As that great host, with measured tread. 
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, 
Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, 

Where stood the dauntless Three. 

XXXVI. 

The Three stood calm and silent. 

And looked upon the foes. 
And a great shout of laughter 

From all the vanguard rose : 
And forth three chiefs came spurring 

Before that deep array ; 
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, 
And lifted high their shields, and flew 

To win the narrow way. 

XXXVII. 

Annus from green Tifernum, 

Lord of the Hill of Vines ; 
And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves 

Sicken in Ilva's mines ; 



l64 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

And Picus, long to Clusium 

Vassal in peace and war, 
AVho led to fight his Umbrian powers 
From that gray crag where, girt with towers, 
The fortress of Nequinum lowers 

O'er the pale waves of Nar. 



xxxvm. 

Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus 

Into the stream beneath ; 
Herminius struck at Seius, 

And clove him to the teeth ; 
At Picus brave Hbratius 

Darted one fiery thrust, 
And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms 

Clashed in the bloody dust. 



XXXIX. 

Then Ocnus of Falerii 

Rushed on the Roman Three ; 
And Lausulus of Urgo, 

The rover of the sea ; 
And Aruns of Volsinium, 

Who slew the great wild boar, — 
The great wild boar that had his den 
Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen. 
And wasted fields, and slaughtered men, 

Along Albinia's shore. 



L^VS OF ANCIENT ROME. 165 

XL. 

Herminius smote down Anms ; 

Lartius laid Ocnus low ; 
Right to the heart of Lausulus 

Horatius sent a blow. 
'' Lie there," he cried, " fell pirate ! 

No more, aghast and pale, 
From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark 
The track of thy destroying bark. 
No more Campania's hinds shall fly 
To woods and caverns when they spy 

Thy thrice accursed sail." 



XLI.' 

But now no sound of laughter 

Was heard among the foes. 
A wild and wrathful clamor 

From all the vanguard rose. 
Six spears' lengths from the entrance 

Halted that deep array, 
And for a space no man came forth 

To win the narrow way. 

XLII. 

But hark ! the cry is Astur ; 

And lo ! the ranks divide, 
And the great Lord of Luna 

Comes with his stately stride. 



1 66 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Upon his ample shoulders 

Clangs loud the fourfold shield, 

And in his hand he shakes the brand 
Which none but he can wield. 



XLIII. 

He smiled on those bold Romans, 

A smile serene and high : 
He eyed the flinching Tuscans, 

And scorn was in his eye. 
Quoth he, " The she-wolf's litter 

Stand savagely at bay ; 
But will ye dare to follow 

If Astur clears the way?" 



XLIV. 

Then, whirling up his broadsword 

With both hands to the height, 
He rushed against Horatius, 

And smote with all his might. 
With shield and blade Horatius 

Right deftly turned the blow. 
The blow, though turned, came yet too nigh 
It missed its helm, but gashed his thigh. 
The Tuscans raised a joyful cry 

To see the red blood flow. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 6/ 



XLV. 



He reeled, and on Herminius 

He leaned one breathing-space, 
Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, 

Sprang right at Astur's face. 
Through teeth and skull and helmet, 

So fierce a thrust he sped. 
The good sword stood a hand- breadth out 

Behind the Tuscan's head. 

XLVI. 

And the great Lord of Luna 

Fell at that deadly stroke. 
As falls on Mount Alvernus 

A thunder-smitten oak. 
Far o'er the crashing forest 

The giant arms lie spread ; 
And the pale augurs, muttering low. 

Gaze on the blasted head. 

XLVII. 

On Astur's throat Horatius 

Right firmly pressed his heel, 
And thrice and four times tugged amain, 

Ere he wrenched out the steel. 
"And see," he cried, " the welcome, 

Fair guests, that waits you here ! 
What noble Lucumo comes next 

To taste our Roman cheer? " 



1 68 READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

XLVIII. 

But at his haughty challenge, 

A sullen muraiur ran, 
Mingled of wrath and shame and dread, 

Along that glittering van. 
There lacked not men of prowess. 

Nor men of lordly race \ 
For all Etruria's noblest 

Were round the fatal place. 

XLIX. 

But all Etruria's noblest 

Felt their hearts sink to see 
On the earth the bloody corpses, 

In the path the dauntless Three. 
And, from the ghastly entrance 

Where those bold Romans stood. 
All shrank, like boys who unaware, 
Ranging the woods to start a hare. 
Come to the mouth of the dark lair 
Where, growling low, a fierce old bear 

Lies amidst bones and blood. 



L. 

Was none who would be foremost 
To lead such dire attack ; 

But those behind cried " Forward ! 
And those before cried " Back ! " 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 69 

And backward now, and forward, 

Wavers the deep array ; 
And on the tossing sea of steel, 
To and fro the standards reel ; 
And the victorious trumpet peal 

Dies fitfully away. 



LI. 

Yet one man for one moment 

Strode out before the crowd : 
Well known was he to all the Three, 

And they gave him greeting loud. 
" Now welcome, welcome, Sextus I 

Now welcome to thy home ! 
Why dost thou stay, and turn away ? 

Here Hes the road to Rome." 



LH. 

Thrice looked he at the city ; 

Thrice looked he at the dead ; 
And thrice came on in fury. 

And thrice turned back in dread, 
And, white with fear and hatred. 

Scowled at the narrow way, 
Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, 

The bravest Tuscans lay. 



I/O READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

LIII. 

But meanwhile axe and lever 

Have manfully been plied ; 
And now the bridge hangs tottering 

Above the boiling tide. 
" Come back, come back, Horatius ! '* 

Loud cried the Fathers all. 
" Back, Lartius ! back, Herminius 1 

Back, ere the ruin fall ! " 

LIV. 

Back darted Spurius Lartius ; 

Herminius darted back : 
And, as they passed, beneath their feet 

They felt the timbers crack. 
But when they turned their faces, 

And on the farther shore 
Saw brave Horatius stand alone, 

They would have crossed once more. 

LV. 

But with a crash like thunder 

Fell every loosened beam, 
And, like a dam, the mighty wreck 

Lay right athwart the stream : 
And a long shout of triumph 

Rose from the walls of Rome, 
As to the highest turret- tops 

Was splashed the yellow foam. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. I /I 

LVI. 

And like a horse unbroken, 

When first he feels the rein, 
The furious river struggled hard. 

And tossed his tawny mane. 
And burst the curb, and bounded, 

Rejoicing to be free, 
And whirling down, in fierce career, 
Battlement and plank and pier, 

Rushed headlong to the sea. 

LVII. 

Alone stood brave Horatius, 

But constant still in mind ; 
Thrice thirty thousand foes before, 

And the broad flood behind. 
" Down with him ! " cried false Sextus, 

With a smile on his pale face. 
" Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, 

*' Now yield thee to our grace." 

LVIII. 

Round turned he, as not deigning 

Those craven ranks to see ; 
Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, 

To Sextus naught spake he ; 
But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home. 
And he spake to the noble river 

That rolls by the towers of Rome. 



172 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

LIX. 
" O Tiber ! father Tiber ! 

To whom the Romans pray, 
A Roman's Hfe, a Roman's arms, 

Take thou in charge this day ! " 
So he spake, and, speaking, sheathed 

The good sword by his side. 
And with his harness on his back, 

Plunged headlong in the tide. 

LX. 

No sound of joy or sorrow 

Was heard from either bank : 
But friends and foes in dumb surprise, 
With parted lips and straining eyes, 

Stood gazing where he sank ; 
And when above the surges, 

They saw his crest appear. 
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, 
And even the ranks of Tuscany 

Could scarce forbear to cheer. 

LXI. 

But fiercely ran the current, 

Swollen high by months of rain : 
And fast his blood was flowing. 

And he was sore in pain. 
And heavy with his armor. 

And spent with changing blows ; 
And oft they thought him sinking, 

But still again he rose. 



LAFS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 73 

LXII. 
Never, I ween, did swimmer. 

In such an evil case, 
Struggle through such a raging flood 

Safe to the landing-place ; 
But his limbs were borne up bravely 

By the brave heart within, 
And our good father Tiber 

Bare bravely up his chin.^ 

Lxm. 
"Curse on him ! " quoth false Sextus : 

" Will not the villain drown ? 
But for this stay, ere close of day 

We should have sacked the town ! " 
" Heaven help him ! " quoth Lars Porsena, 

" And bring him safe to shore ; 
For such a gallant feat of arms 

Was never seen before." 

Lxrv. 
And now he feels the bottom ; 

Now on dry earth he stands ; 
Now round him throng the Fathers, 

To press his gory hands ; 

I " Our ladye bare upp her chinne." 

Ballad of Childe Waters. 
" Never heavier man and horse 
Stemmed a midnight torrent's force; 



Yet, through good heart and our Lady's grace. 
At length he gained the landing place." 

Lay of the Last Minstrel^ /. 



174 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY, 

And now, with shouts and clapping, 
And noise of weeping loud, 

He enters through the River-Gate, 
Borne by the joyous crowd. 

LXV. 

They gave him of the corn-land, 

That was of public right. 
As much as two strong oxen 

Could plough from morn till night. 
And they made a molten image, 

And set it up on high ; 
And there it stands unto this day, 

To witness if I lie. 

LXVI. 

It stands in the Comitium, 

Plain for all folk to see, — 
Horatius in his harness. 

Halting upon one knee ; 
And underneath is written, 

In letters all of gold. 
How valiantly he kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 

LXVII. 

And still his name sounds stirring 

Unto the men of Rome, 
As the trumpet-blast that cries to them 

To charge the Volscian home ; 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1/5 

And wives still pray to Juno 

For boys with hearts as bold 
As his who kept the bridge so well 

In the brave days of old. 

LXVIII. 

And in the nights of winter, 

When the cold north winds blow, 
And the long howling of the wolves 

Is heard amidst the snow ; 
When round the lonely cottage 

Roars loud the tempest's din, 
And the good logs of Algidus 

Roar louder yet within ; 

LXIX. 

When the oldest cask is opened. 

And the largest lamp is lit ; 
When the chestnuts glow in the embers, 

And the kid turns on the spit ; 
When young and old in circle 

Around the firebrands close ; 
When the girls are weaving baskets. 

And the lads are shaping bows ; 

LXX. 

When the goodman mends his armor, 

And trims his helmet's plume ; 
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily 

Goes flashing through the loom, — 



176 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

With weeping and with laughter 

Still is the story told, 
How well Horatius kept the- bridge 

In the brave days of old. 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME, lyj 



THE BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS. 



The following poem is supposed to have been pro- 
duced about ninet)^ years after the lay of " Horatius." 
Some persons mentioned in the lay of " Horatius " 
make their appearance again, and some appellations 
and epithets used in the lay of " Horatius " have been 
purposely repeated ; for, in an age of ballad-poetry, 
it scarcely ever fails to happen, that certain phrases 
come to be appropriated to certain men and things, 
and are regularly applied to those men and things by 
every rhinstrel. Thus we find, both in the Homeric 
poems and in Hesiod, Pi-q 'UpaKXrjarj, TreptKAvros 
'AfxcfiLyvqei<;, 8iaKTO/30S 'Apyet^wrr;?, €7rra7n;Xo9 ^rj/^rjy 
'EXcvrys hcK rjvKOfxoio. Thus, too, in our own national 
songs, Douglas is almost always the doughty Douglas ; 
England is merry England ; all the gold is red ; and 
all the ladies are gay. 

The principal distinction between the lay of " Hora- 
tius " and the lay of the " Lake Regillus " is that the 
former is meant to be purely Roman, while the latter, 
though national in its general spirit, has a slight tinc- 
ture of Greek learning and of Greek superstition. The 
story of the Tarquins, as it has come down to us, 
appears to have been compiled from the works of 



178 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

several popular poets ; and one, at least, of those 
poets appears to have visited the Greek colonies in 
Italy, if not Greece itself, and to have had some ac- 
quaintance with the works of Homer and Herodotus. 
Many of the most striking adventures of the house of 
Tarquin, before Lucretia makes her appearance, have 
a Greek character. The Tarquins themselves are rep- 
resented as Corinthian nobles of the great house of 
the Bacchiadae, driven from their country by the tyr- 
anny of that Cypselus, the tale of whose strange escape 
Herodotus has related with incomparable simplicity 
and liveliness.' Livy and Dionysius tell us, that, when 
Tarquin the Proud was asked what was the best mode 
of governing a conquered city, he replied only by 
beating down with his staff all the tallest poppies in 
his garden.^ This is exactly what Herodotus, in the 
passage to which reference has already been made, 
relates of the counsel given to Periander, the son of 
Cypselus. The stratagem by which the town of Gabii 
is brought under the power of the Tarquins is, again, 
obviously copied from Herodotus.^ The embassy of 
the young Tarquins to the oracle at Delphi is just 
such a story as would be told by a poet whose head 
was full of the Greek mythology ; and the ambiguous 
answer returned by Apollo is in the exact style of 
the prophecies which, according to Herodotus, lured 
Croesus to destruction. Then the character of the 



1 Herodotus, v. 92. Livy, i. 34. Dionysius, iii. 46. 

2 Livy, i. 54. Dionysius, iv. 56. 

3 Herodotus, iii. 154. Livy, i. 53. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. I7g 

narrative changes. From the first mention of Lucretia 
to the retreat of Porsena, nothing seems to be bor- 
rowed from foreign sources. The villany of Sextus, 
the suicide of his victim, the revohition, the death of 
the sons of Brutus, the defence of the bridge, Mucius 
burning his hand,' Cloeha swimming through Tiber, 
seem, to be all strictly Roman. But when we have 
done with the Tuscan war, and enter upon the war 
with the Latines, we are again struck by the Greek 
air of the story. The battle of the Lake Regillus is 
in all respects a Homeric battle, except that the com- 
batants ride astride on their horses, instead of driving 
chariots. The mass of fighting-men is hardly men- 
tioned. The leaders single each other out, and engage 
hand to hand. The great object of the warriors on 
both sides is, as in the Iliad, to obtain possession of 
the spoils and bodies of the slain ; and several cir- 
cumstances are related which forcibly remind us of 
the great slaughter round the corpses of Sarpedon 
and Patroclus. 

But there is one circumstance which deserves espe- 
cial notice. Both the war of Troy and the war of 
Regillus were caused by the Hcentious passions of 
young princes, who were therefore peculiarly bound 
not to be sparing of their own persons in the day of 
battle. Now, the conduct of Sextus at Regillus, as 



^ M. de PouIIly attempted, a hundred and twenty years ago, to prove 
that the story of Mucius was of Greek origin; but he was signally confuted 
by the Abbd Sallier. See the Me moires de VAcadeinie des Inscriptions, 
vi. 27, 66, 



l80 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

described by Livy, so exactly resembles that of Paris, 
as described at the beginning of the third book of the 
Iliad, that it is difficult to believe the resemblance 
accidental. Paris appears before the Trojan ranks, 
defying the bravest Greek to encounter him. 

TpwCTiv [ilv TTpofidxtCev 'A'Ai^avSpog deoeid^gj 
. . . 'Apyeiuv irponaTiL^ero navrag apiarovg, 
uvTL^Lov ixaxsoaadai kv alvy drjloTTjri, 

Livy introduces Sextus in a similar manner : " Ferocem 
juvenem Tarquinium, ostentantem se in prima exsulum 
acie." Menelaus rushes to meet Paris. A Roman 
noble, eager for vengeance, spurs his horse towards 
Sextus. Both the guilty princes are instantly terror- 
stricken : — 

Tbv (5' 6)g ovv hvorjaev 'Als^avSpor deoeti^g 
ev TTpof^axocai (bavevra, KaT£TT?.Tjy7j (pl/iov rjTop' 
lixp 6' erupcov dg edvog f,t;a^cro K7/p' aXsdvuv. 

" Tarquinius," says Livy, " retro in agmen suorum in- 
fenso cessit hosti." If this be a fortuitous coincidence, 
it is one of the most extraordinary in literature. 

In the following poem, therefore, images and inci- 
dents have been borrowed, not merely without scruple, 
but on principle, from the incomparable battle-pieces 
of Homer. 

The popular belief at Rome, from an early period, 
seems to have been that the event of the great day 
of Regillus was decided by supernatural agency. Cas- 
tor and Pollux, it was said, had fought, armed and 



ZAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. iSl 

mounted, at the head of the legions of the common- 
weahh, and had afterwards carried the news of the 
victory with incredible speed to the city. The well in 
the Forum at which they had alighted was pointed 
out. Near the well rose their ancient temple. A 
great festival was kept to their honor on the Ides of 
Quintilis, supposed to be the anniversary of the battle ; 
and on that day sumptuous sacrifices were offered to 
them at the public charge. One spot on the margin 
of Lake Regillus was regarded during many ages with 
superstitious awe. A mark, resembling in shape a 
horse's hoof, was discernible in the volcanic rock; 
and this mark was believed to have been made by one 
of the celestial chargers. 

How the legend originated cannot now be ascer- 
tained, but we may easily imagine several ways in 
which it might have originated ; nor is it at all ne- 
cessary to suppose, with Julius Frontinus, that two 
young men were dressed up by the Dictator to per- 
sonate the sons of Leda. It is probable that Livy is 
correct when he says that the Roman general, in the 
hour of peril, vowed a temple to Castor. If so, 
nothing could be more natural than that the multitude 
should ascribe the victory to the favor of the Twin 
Gods. When such was the prevailing sentiment, any 
man who chose to declare, that, in the midst of the 
confusion and slaughter, he had seen two godlike 
forms on white horses scattering the Latines, would 
find ready credence. We know, indeed, that, in mod- 
em times, a very similar story actually found credence 



1 82 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

among a people much more civilized than the Romans 
of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of 
Cortes, writing about thirty years after the conquest 
of Mexico, in an age of printing-presses, libraries, 
universities, scholars, logicians, jurists, and statesmen, 
had the face to assert, that, in one engagement against 
the Indians, St. James had appeared on a gray horse 
at the head of the Castilian adventurers. Many of 
those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. 
One of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account 
of the expedition. He had the evidence of his own 
senses against the legend, but he seems to have dis- 
trusted even the evidence of his own senses. He 
says that he was in the battle, and that he saw a 
gray horse with a man on his back, but that the man 
was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla, and not the 
ever-blessed apostle St. James. " Nevertheless," Ber- 
nal adds, "it may be that the person on the gray 
horse was the glorious apostle St. James, and that I, 
sinner that I am, was unworthy to see him." The 
Romans of the age of Cincinnatus were probably 
quite as credulous as the Spanish subjects of Charles 
the Fifth. It is therefore conceivable that the appear- 
ance of Castor and Pollux may have become an arti- 
cle of faith before the generation which had fought at 
Regillus had passed away. Nor could any thing be 
more natural than that the poets of the next age 
should embellish this story, and make the celestial 
horsemen bear the tidings of victory to Rome. 

Many years after the temple of the Twin Gods had 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 83 

been built in the Fomm, an important addition was 
made to the ceremonial by which the State annually 
testified its gratitude for their protection. Quintus 
Fabius and Publius Decius were elected censors at a 
momentous crisis. It had become absolutely neces- 
sary that the classification of the citizens should be 
revised. On that classification depended the distribu- 
tion of political power. Party- spirit ran high, and 
the republic seemed to be in danger of falling under 
the dominion either of a narrow oligarchy or of an 
ignorant and headstrong rabble. Under such circum- 
stances, the most illustrious patrician and the most 
illustrious plebeian of the age were intrusted with the 
office of arbitrating between the angry factions ; and 
they performed their arduous task to the satisfaction 
of all honest and reasonable men. 

One of their reforms was a remodelling of the 
equestrian order; and, having effected this reform, 
they determined to give to their work a sanction 
derived from religion. In the chivalrous societies of 
modern times, societies which have much more than 
may at first sight appear in common with the eques- 
trian order of Rome, it has been usual to invoke the 
special protection of some saint, and to observe his 
day with peculiar solemnity. Thus, the Companions 
of the Garter wear the image of St. George depend- 
ing from their collars, and meet, on great occasions, 
in St. George's Chapel. Thus, when Lewis the Four- 
teenth instituted a new order of chivalry for the re- 
warding of military merit, he commended it to the 



1 84 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

favor of his own glorified ancestor and patron, and 
decreed that all the members of the fraternity should 
meet at the royal palace on the feast of St. Lewis, 
should attend the king to chapel, should hear mass, 
and should subsequently hold their great annual assem- 
bly. There is a considerable resemblance between 
this rule of the order of St. Lewis and the rule which 
Fabius and Decius made respecting the Roman knights. 
It was ordained that a grand muster and inspection of 
the equestrian body should be part of the ceremonial 
performed, on the anniversary of the battle of Regillus, 
in honor of Castor and Pollux, the two equestrian 
gods. All the knights, clad in purple, and crowned 
with olive, were to meet at a temple of Mars in the 
suburbs. Thence they were to ride in state to the 
Forum, where the temple of the Twins stood. This 
pageant was, during several centuries, considered as 
one of the most splendid sights of Rome. In the 
time of Dionysius, the cavalcade sometimes consisted 
of five thousand horsemen, all persons of fair repute 
and easy fortune.^ 

There can be no doubt that the censors who insti- 
tuted this august ceremony acted in concert with the 
pontiffs, to whom, by the constitution of Rome, the 
superintendence of the public worship belonged ; and 
it is probable that those high religious functionaries 



^ See Livy, ix. 46. Val. Max. ii. 2. Aurel. Vict. De Viris Illustribus, 
32. Dionysius, vi. 13. Plin. Hist. Nat. xv. 5, See also the singularly in- 
genious chapter in Niebuhr's posthumous volume, Die Censur des Q. Fabius 
iifid P. Decius. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 8$ 

were, as usual, fortunate enough to find in their books 
or traditions some warrant for the innovation. 

The following poem is supposed to have been made 
for this great occasion. Songs, we know, were chanted 
at the religious festivals of Rome from an early period ; 
indeed, from so early a period that some of the sacred 
verses were popularly ascribed to Numa, and were 
utterly unintelligible in the age of Augustus. In the 
Second Punic War a great feast was held in honor of 
Juno, and a song was sung in her praise. This song 
was extant when Livy wrote, and, though exceedingly 
rugged and uncouth, seemed to him not wholly desti- 
tute of merit.' A song, as we learn from Horace,^ 
was part of the established ritual at the great Secular 
Jubilee. It is therefore likely that the censors and 
pontiffs, when they had resolved to add a grand pro- 
cession of knights to the other solemnities annually 
performed on the Ides of Quintilis, would call in the 
aid of a poet. Such a poet would naturally take for 
his subject the battle of Regillus, the appearance of 
the Twin Gods, and the institution of their festival. 
He would find abundant materials in the ballads of 
his predecessors, and he would make free use of the 
scanty stock of Greek learning which he had himself 
acquired. He would probably introduce some wise 
and holy pontiff enjoining the magnificent ceremonial 
which, after a long interval, had at length been 
adopted. If the poem succeeded, many persons 

^ Livy, xxvii. 37. 2 Hor. Carmen Seculare. 



1 86 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

would commit it to memory. Parts of it would be 
sung to the pipe at banquets. It would be peculiarly 
interesting to the great Posthumian House, which num- 
bered among its many images that of the Dictator 
Aulus, the hero of Regillus. The orator who, in the 
following generation, pronounced the funeral pane- 
gyric over the remains of Lucius Posthumius Megel- 
lus, thrice consul, would borrow largely from the lay ; 
and thus some passages, much disfigured, would prob- 
ably find their way into the chronicles which were 
afterwards in the hands of Dionysius and Livy. 

Antiquaries differ widely as to the situation of the 
field of battle. The opinion of those who suppose 
that the armies met near Cornufelle, between Frascati 
and the Monte Porzio, is at least plausible, and has 
been followed in the poem. 

As to the details of the battle, it has not been 
thought desirable to adhere minutely to the accounts 
which have come down to us. Those accounts, in- 
deed, differ widely from each other, and in all proba- 
bility differ as widely from the ancient poem from 
which they were originally derived. 

It is unnecessary to point out the obvious imitations 
of the Iliad, which have been purposely introduced. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 8/ 



THE BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS. 

A LAY SUNG AT THE FEAST OF CASTOR AND POLLUX ON 
THE IDES OF QUINTILIS, IN THE YEAR OF THE CITY 
CCCCLI. 



Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note ! 

Ho, lictors, clear the way ! 
The knights will ride, in all their pride, 

Along the streets to-day. 
To-day the doors and windows 

Are hung with garlands all, 
From Castor in the Forum, 

To Mars without the wall. 
Each knight is robed in purple, 

With olive each is crowned : 
A gallant war-horse under each 

Paws haughtily the ground. 
While flows the Yellow River, 

While stands the Sacred Hill, 
The proud Ides of Quintilis 

Shall have such honor still. 
Gay are the Martian Kalends ; 

December's Nones are gay ; 



1 88 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

But tlie proud Ides, n^hen the squadron rides, 
Shall be Rome's \Uiitest day. 

IT. 

Unto the Great Twin Brethren 

We keep this solemn feast. 
Swift, swift, the Great Twin Brethren 

Came spurring from the east. 
They came o'er vnld Parthenius, 

Tossing in waves of pine. 
O'er Cirrha's dome, o'er Adria's foam, 

O'er purple .M»ennine, 
From where, witn flutes and dances. 

Their ancient mansion rings, 
In lordly Lace-daemon, 

The city of' two kings. 
To where, by,- Lake Regillus, 

Under the Porcian height, 
All in the lainds of Tusculum, 

Was foug/nt the glorious fight. 

\ 

[ III. 

Now on thq?. place of slaughter 

Are cots/ and sheepfolds seen. 
And rows (of vines, and fields of wheat. 

And ap^ple-orchards green : 
The swin'3 crush the big acorns 

That fall from Corne's oaks ; 
Upon th^e turf by the Fair Fount, 

The re.aper's pottage smokes. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 89 

The fisher baits his angle ; 

The hunter twangs his bow ; 
Little they think on those strong Hmbs 

Tliat moulder deep below. 
Little they think how sternly 

That day the trumpets pealed ; 
How in the slippery swamp of blood 

Warrior and war-horse reeled ; 
How wolves came with fierce gallop, 

And crows on eager wings, 
To tear the flesh of captains, 

And peck the eyes of kings ; 
How thick the dead lay scattered 

Under the Porcian height ; 
How through the gates of Tusculum 

Raved the wild stream of flight ; 
And how the Lake Regillus 

Bubbled with crimson foam. 
What time the Thirty Cities 

Came forth to war with Rome. 

IV. 

But, Roman, when thou standest 

Upon that holy ground, 
Look thou with heed on the dark rock 

That girds the dark lake round. 
So shalt thou see a hoof-mark 

Stamped deep into the flint ; 
It was no hoof of mortal steed 

That made so strange a dint : 



1 90 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

There to the Great Twin Brethren 
Vbw thou tliy vows, and pray 

That they, in tempest and in fight, 
Will keep thy head alway. 



V. 

Since last the Great Twin Brethren 

Of mortal eyes were seen, 
Have years gone by an hundred 

And fourscore and thirteen. 
That summer a Virginius 

Was consul first in place : 
The second was stout Aulus, 

Of the Posthumian race. 
The herald of the Latines 

From Gabii came in state ; 
The herald of the Latines 

Passed through Rome's Eastern Gate ; 
The herald of the Latines 

Did in our Forum stand, 
And there he did his ofSce, 

A sceptre in his hand. 



VI. 

" Hear, senators, and people 
Of the good town of Rome : 

The Thirty Cities charge you 
To bring the Tarquins home ; 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. IQI 

And if ye still be stubborn, 

To work the Tarquins wrong, 
The Thirty Cities warn you. 

Look that your walls be strong." 



VII. 

Then spake the Consul Aulus, 

He spake a bitter jest : 
" Once the jays sent a message 

Unto the eagle's nest, — 
Now yield thou up thy eyry 

Unto the carrion-kite. 
Or come forth valiantly, and face 

The jays in deadly fight. 
Forth looked in wrath the eagle : 

And carrion-kite and jay. 
Soon as they saw his beak and claw, 

Fled screaming far away." 



vm. 

The herald of the Latines 

Hath hied him back in state : 
The Fathers of the city 

Are met in high debate. 
Then spake the elder consul, 

An ancient man and wise : 
" Now hearken. Conscript Fathers, 

To that which I advise. 



192 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y, 

In seasons of great peril, 

'Tis good that one bear sway : 
Then choose we a Dictator, 

Whom all men shall obey. . 
Camerium knows how deeply 

The sword of Aulus bites, 
And all our city calls him 

The man of seventy fights. 
Then let him be Dictator 

For six months, and no m.ore. 
And have a Master of the Knights, 

And axes twenty- four." 

IX. 

So Aulus was Dictator, 

The man of seventy fights : 
He made ^butius Elva 

His Master of the Knights. 
On the third morn thereafter. 

At dawning of the day, 
Did Aulus and ^butius 

Set forth with their array. 
Sempronius Atratinus 

Was left in charge at home, 
W^ith boys, and with gray-headed men. 

To keep the walls of Rome. 
Hard by the Lake Regillus 

Our camp was pitched at night : 
Eastward a mile the Latines lay, 

Under the Porcian height. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 93 

Far over hill and valley 

Their mighty host was spread, 
And with their thousand watch-fires 

The midnight sky was red. 

X. 

Up rose the golden morning 

Over the Porcian height, 
The proud Ides of Quintilis 

Marked evermore with white. 
Not without secret trouble 

Our bravest saw the foes ; 
For, girt by threescore thousand spears, 

The thirty standards rose. 
From every warlike city 

That boasts the Latian name. 
Foredoomed to dogs' and vultures, 

That gallant army came ; 
From Setia's purple vineyards ; 

From Norba's ancient wall ; 
From the white streets of Tusculum, 

The proudest town of all ; 
From where the Witch's Fortress 

O'erhangs the dark-blue seas ; 
From the still, glassy lake that sleeps 

Beneath Aricia's trees, — 
Those trees in whose dim shadow 

The ghastly priest doth reign, 
The priest who slew the slayer, 

And shall himself be slain j 



194 READINGS FROM MACAULAV. 

From the drear banks of Ufens, 

Where flights of marsh-fowl play, 
And buffaloes lie wallowing 

Through the hot summer's day ; 
From the gigantic watch-towers, 

No work of earthly men, 
Whence Cora's sentinels o'erlook 

The never-ending fen ; 
From the Laurentian jungle, 

The wild hog's reedy home ; 
From the green steeps whence Anio leaps 

In floods of snow-white foam, 

XI. 

Aricia, Cora, Norba, 

Velitrae, with the might 
Of Setia and of Tusculum, 

Were marshalled on the right : 
The leader was Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name ; 
Upon his head a helmet 

Of red gold shone like flame ; 
High on a gallant charger 

Of dark-gray hue he rode ; 
Over his gilded armor, 

A vest of purple flowed, 
Woven in the land of sunrise 

By Syria's dark-browed daughters, 
And by the sails of Carthage brought 

Far o'er the southern waters. 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 95 

xir. 

Lavinium and Laurentum 

Had on the left their post, 
With all the banners of the marsh, 

And banners of the coast. 
Their leader was false Sextus, 

That wrought the deed of shame ; 
With restless pace and haggard face 

To his last field he came. 
Men said he saw strange visions 

Which none beside might see. 
And that strange sounds were in his ears 

Which none might hear but he. 
A woman fair and stately. 

But pale as are the dead. 
Oft through the watches of the night 

Sat spinning by his bed. 
And as she plied the distaff. 

In a sweet voice, and low. 
She sang of great old houses, 

And fights fought long ago. 
So spun she, and so sang she, 

Until the east was gray. 
Then pointed to her bleeding breast, 

And shrieked, and fled away. 

XIII. 

But in the centre, thickest 

Were ranged the shields of foes ; 



1 96 READINGS FROM MA CA ULA V. 

And from the centre, loudest 

The cry of battle rose. 
There Tibur marched and Pedum 

Beneath proud Tarquin's rule, 
And Ferentinum of the rock, 

And Gabii of the pool ; 
There rode the Volscian succors ; 

There, in a dark, stern ring. 
The Roman exiles gathered close 

Around the ancient king. 
Though white as Mount Soracte, 

When winter nights are long, 
His beard flowed down o'er mail and belt, 

His heart and hand were strong : 
Under his hoary eyebrows 

Still flashed forth quenchless rage. 
And, if the lance shook in his gripe, 

'T was more with hate than age. 
Close at his side was Titus 

On an Apulian steed, — 
Titus, the youngest Tarquin, 

Too good for such a breed. 

xrv. 

Now on each side the leaders 

Gave signal for the charge ; 
And on each side the footmen 

Strode on with lance and targe ; 
And on each side the horsemen 

Struck their spurs deep in gore ; 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 97 

And front to front the armies 

Met with a mighty roar : 
And under that great battle 

The earth with blood was red ; 
And, like the Pomptine fog at mom. 

The dust hung overhead ; 
And louder still, and louder. 

Rose from the darkened field 
The braying of the war-horns, 

The clang of sword and shield. 
The rush of squadrons sweeping 

Like whirlwinds o'er the plain, 
The shouting of the slayers, 

And screeching of the slain. 

XV. 

False Sextus rode out foremost : 

His look was high and bold ; 
His corselet was of bison's hide. 

Plated with steel and gold. 
As glares the famished eagle 

From the Digentian rock 
On a choice lamb that bounds alone 

Before Bandusia's flock, 
Herminius glared on Sextus, 

And came with eagle speed, 
Herminius on black Auster, 

Brave champion on brave steed ; 
In his right hand the broadsword 

That kept the bridge so well, 



198 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

And on his helm the crown he won 

When proud Fidense fell. 
Woe to the maid whose lover 

Shall cross his path to-day ! 
False Sextus saw, and trembled, 

And turned, and fled away. 
As turns, as flies, the woodman 

In the Calabrian brake. 
When through the reeds gleams the round eye 

Of that fell speckled snake ; 
So turned, so fled, false Sextus, 

And hid him in the rear. 
Behind the dark Lavinian ranks. 

Bristling with crest and spear. 

XVI. 

But far to north ^butius. 

The Master of the Knights, 
Gave Tubero of Norba 

To feed the Porcian kites. 
Next under those red horse-hoofs 

Flaccus of Setia lay : 
Better had he been pruning 

Among his elms that day. 
Mamilius saw the slaughter. 

And tossed his golden crest. 
And towards the Master of the Knights 

Through the thick battle pressed, 
^butius smote Mamilius 

So fiercely on the shield, 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 1 99 

That the great lord of Tiisculum 

Well-nigh rolled on the field. 
Mamilius smote ^butius, 

With a good aim, and true, 
Just where the neck and shoulder join. 

And pierced him through and through ; 
And brave ^butius Elva 

Fell swooning to the ground, 
But a thick wall of bucklers 

Encompassed him around. 
His chents from the battle 

Bare him some little space, 
And filled a helm from the dark lake, 

And bathed his brow and face ; 
And when at last he opened 

His swimming eyes to light, 
Men say, the earliest words he spake 

Was, " Friends, how goes the fight ? " 

xvn. 

But meanwhile in the centre 

Great deeds of arms were wrought : 
There Aulus the Dictator, 

And there Valerius, fought. 
Aulus with his good broadsword 

A bloody passage cleared 
To where, amidst the thickest foes, 

He saw the long white beard. 
Flat lighted that good broadsword 

Upon proud Tarquin's head. 



200 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

He dropped the lance ; he dropped the reins ; 

He fell as fall the dead. 
Down Aulus springs to slay him, 

With eyes like coals of fire ; 
But faster Titus hath sprung down, 

And hath bestrode his sire. 
Latian captains, Roman knights. 

Fast down to earth they spring. 
And hand to hand they fight on foot 

Around the ancient king. 
First Titus gave tall Caeso 

A death-wound in the face ; 
Tall Cseso was the bravest man 

Of the brave Fabian race : 
Aulus slew Rex of Gabii, 

The priest of Juno's shrine : 
Valerius smote down Julius, 

Of Rome's great Julian hne, — 
Julius, who left his mansion, 

High on the Velian hill. 
And through all turns of weal and woe 

Followed proud Tarquin still. 
Now right across proud Tarquin 

A corpse was Julius laid ; 
And Titus groaned with rage and grief, 

And at Valerius made. 
Valerius struck at Titus, 

And lopped off half his crest ; 
But Titus stabbed Valerius 

A span deep in the breast. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 201 

Like a mast snapped by the tempest, 

Valerius reeled and fell. 
Ah ! woe is me for the good house 

That loves the people well ! 
Then shouted loud the Latines, 

And with one rush they bore 
The struggling Romans backward 

Three lances' length and more : 
And up they took proud Tarquin, 

And laid him on a shield ; 
And four strong yeomen bare him, 

Still senseless, from the field. 

XVIII. 

But fiercer grew the fighting 

Around Valerius dead ; 
For Titus dragged him by the foot, 

And Aulus by the head. 
" On, Latines, on ! " quoth Titus. 

" See how the rebels fly ! " 
" Romans, stand firm ! " quoth Aulus, 

" And win this fight, or die ! 
They must not give Valerius 

To raven and to kite ; 
For aye Valerius loathed the wrong. 

And aye upheld the right : 
And for j^our wives and babies 

In the front rank he fell. 
Now play the men for the good house 

That loves the people well ! " 



202 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY, 

XIX. 

Then tenfold round the body 

The roar of battle rose, 
Like the roar of a burning forest 

When a strong north wind blows. 
Now backward, and now forward, 

Rocked furiously the fray. 
Till none could see Valerius, 

And none wist where he lay. 
For shivered arms and ensigns 

Were heaped there in a mound, 
And corpses stiff, and dying men 

That writhed, and gnawed the ground ; 
And wounded horses kicking, 

And snorting purple foam : 
Right well did such a couch befit 

A Consular of Rome. 



XX. 

But north looked the Dictator, 

North looked he long and hard, 
And spake to Caius Cossus, 

The Captain of his Guard, — 
" Caius, of all the Romans 

Thou hast the keenest sight : 
Say, what through yonder storm of dust 

Comes from the Latian right?" 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 203 

XXI. 

Then answered Caius Cossus, — 

" I see an evil sight ; 
The banner of proud Tusculum 

Comes from the Latian right ; 
I see the plumed horsemen ; 

And far before the rest, 
I see the dark-gray charger, 

I see the purple vest ; 
I see the golden helmet 

That shines far off like flame ; 
So ever rides Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name." 

XXII. 

" Now hearken, Caius Cossus ; 

Spring on thy horse's back ; 
Ride as the wolves of Apennine 

Were all upon thy track ; 
Haste to our southward battle, 

And never draw thy rein 
Until thou find Herminius, 

And bid him come amain." 

XXIII. 

So Aulus spake, and turned him 

Again to that fierce strife ; 
And Caius Cossus mounted. 

And rode for death and life. 



204 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Loud clanged beneath his horse -hoofs 

The helmets of the dead, 
And many a curdling pool of blood 

Splashed him from heel to head. 
So came he far to southward, 

Where fought the Roman host, 
Against the banners of the marsh, 

And banners of the coast. 
Like corn before the sickle 

The stout Lavinians fell, 
Beneath the edge of the true sword 

That kept the bridge so well. 

XXIV. 

" Herminius ! Aulus greets thee : 

He bids thee come with speed, 
To help our central battle ; 

For sore is there our need. 
There wars the youngest Tarquin, 

And there the Crest of Flame, 
The Tusculan Mamilius, 

Prince of the Latian name. 
Valerius hath fallen fighting 

In front of our array. 
And Aulus of the seventy fields 

Alone upholds the day." 

XXV. 

Herminius beat his bosom, 
But never a word he spake. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 205 

He clapped his hand on Auster's mane : 

He gave the reins a shake. 
Away, away, went Auster, 

Like an arrow from the bow : 
Black Auster was the fleetest steed 

From Aufidus to Po. 

XXVI. 

Right glad were all the Romans, 

Who, in that hour of dread. 
Against great odds bare up the war 

Around Valerius dead, 
When from the south the cheering 

Rose with a mighty swell, — 
" Herminius comes, Herminius, 

Who kept the bridge so well ! " 

XXVII. 

Mamilius spied Herminius, 

And dashed across the way. 
" Herminius ! I have sought thee 

Through many a bloody day. 
One of us two, Herminius, 

Shall never more go home. 
I will lay on for Tusculum, 

And lay thou on for Rome ! " 

XXVIII. 

All round them paused the battle. 
While met in mortal fray 



206 - READINGS FROM MACAU LAY, 

The Roman and the Tusculan, 

The horses black and gray. 
Herminius smote Mamihus 

Through breast-plate and through breast, 
And fast flowed out the purple blood 

Over the purple vest. 
Mamilius smote Herminius 

Through head-piece and through head, 
And side by side those chiefs of pride 

Together fell down dead. 
Down fell they dead together 

In a great lake of gore, 
And still stood all who saw them fall 

While men might count a score. 

XXIX. 

Fast, fast, with heels wild spuming, 

The dark-gray charger fled : 
He burst through ranks of fighting-men, 

He sprang o'er heaps of dead. 
His bridle far out-streaming, 

His flanks all blood and foam. 
He sought the southern mountains. 

The mountains of his home. 
The pass was steep and rugged. 

The wolves they howled and whined ; 
But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass, 

And he left the wolves behind. 
Through many a startled hamlet 

Thundered his flying feet ; 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 20/ 

He rushed through the gate of Tusculum, 

He rushed up the long white street ; 
He rushed by tower and temple, 

And paused not from his race 
Till he stood before his master's door 

In the stately market-place. 
And straightway round him gathered 

A pale and trembling crowd ; 
And when they knew him, cries of rage 

Brake forth, and wailing loud ; 
And women rent their tresses 

For their great prince's fall ; 
And old men girt on their old swords, 

And went to man the wall. 

XXX. 

But, like a graven image, 

Black Auster kept his place ; 
And ever wistfully he looked 

Into his master's face. 
The raven mane that daily, 

With pats and fond caresses, 
The young Herminia washed and combed. 

And twined in even tresses, 
And decked with colored ribbons 

From her own gay attire. 
Hung sadly o'er her father's corpse 

In carnage and in mire. 
Forth with a shout sprang Titus, 

And seized black Auster's rein. 



208 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Then Aulus sware a fearful oath. 

And ran at him amain. 
"The furies of thy brother 

With me and mine abide, 
If one of your accursed house 

Upon black Auster ride ! " 
As on an Alpine watch-tower 

From heaven comes down the flame, 
Full on the neck of Titus 

The blade of Aulus came ; 
And out the red blood spouted. 

In a wide arch, and tall, 
As spouts a fountain in the court 

Of some rich Capuan's hall. 
The knees of all the Latines 

Were loosened with dismay, 
When dead, on dead Herminius, 

The bravest Tarquin lay. 



XXXI. 

And Aulus the Dictator 

Stroked Auster's raven mane : 
With heed he looked unto the girths, 

With heed unto the rein. 
" Now bear me well, black Auster, 

Into yon thick array ; 
And thou and I will have revenge 

For thy good lord this day." 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 209 

XXXII. 

So spake he, and was buckling 

Tighter black Auster's band, 
When he was aware of a princely pair 

That rode at his right hand. 
So like they were, no mortal 

Might one from other know : 
White as snow their armor was, 

Their steeds were white as snow. 
Never on earthly anvil 

Did such rare armor gleam, 
And never did such gallant steeds 

Drink of an earthly stream. 

XXXIII. 

And all who saw them trembled, 

And pale grew every cheek ; 
And Aulus the Dictator 

Scarce gathered voice to speak. 
*' Say by what name men call you ? 

What city is your home ? 
And wherefore ride ye in such guise 

Before the ranks of Rome?" 

XXXIV. 

" By many names men call us ; 

In many lands we dwell ; 
Well Samothracia knows us j 

Cyrene knows us well. 



2IO READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY, 

Our house in gay Tarentum 

Is hung each morn with flowers ; 
High o'er the masts of Syracuse 

Our marble portal towers ; 
But by the proud Eurotas 

Is our dear native home, 
And for the right we come to fight 

Before the ranks of Rome." 

XXXV. 

So answered those strange horsemen. 

And each couched low his spear ; 
And forthwith all the ranks of Rome 

Were bold, and of good cheer : 
And on the thirty armies 

Came wonder and affright ; 
And Ardea wavered on the left. 

And Cora on the right. 
" Rome to the charge ! " cried Aulus : 

" The foe begins to yield ! 
Charge for the hearth of Vesta 1 

Charge for the Golden Shield ! 
Let no man stop to plunder, 

But slay, and slay, and slay : 
The gods who live forever 

Are on our side to-day." 

XXXVI. 

Then the fierce trumpet- flourish 
From earth to heaven arose ; 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 211 

The kites know well the long, stem swell 

That bids the Romans close. 
Then the good sword of Aulus 

Was lifted up to slay : 
Then, like a crag down Apennine, 
Rushed Auster through the fray. 
But under those strange horsemen 

Still thicker lay the slain ; 
And after those strange horses, 

Black Auster toiled in vain. 
Behind them Rome's long battle 

Came rolling on the foe, 
Ensigns dancing wild above. 

Blades all in line below. 
So comes the Po in flood-time 

Upon the Celtic plain : 
So comes the squall, blacker than night. 

Upon the Adrian main. 
Now, by our Sire Quirinus, 

It was a goodly sight 
To see the thirty standards 

Swept down the tide of flight. 
So flies the spray of Adria 

When the black squall doth blow : 
So corn-sheaves in the flood-time 

Spin down the whirling Po. 
False Sextus to the mountains 

Turned first his horse's head ; 
And fast fled Ferentinum, 
And fast Lanuvium fled. 



212 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

The horsemen of Nomentum 

Spurred hard out of the fray : 
The footmen of VeUtrae 

Threw shield and spear away. 
And underfoot was trampled, 

Amidst the mud and gore, 
The banner of proud Tusculum, 

That never stooped before : 
And down went Flavins Faustus, 

Who led his stately ranks 
From where the apple-blossoms wave 

On Anio's echoing banks ; 
And Tullus of Arpinum, 

Chief of the Volscian aids ; 
And Metius with the long fair curls, 

The love of Anxur's maids ; 
And the white head of Vulso, 

The great Arician seer ; 
And Nepos of Laurentum, 

The hunter of the deer : 
' And in the back false Sextus 

Felt the good Roman steel, 
And wriggling in the dust he died. 

Like a worm beneath the wheel : 
And fliers and pursuers 

Were mingled in a mass, 
And far away the battle 

Went roaring through the pass 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 213 

xxxvn. 

Sempronius Atratinus 

Sate in the Eastern Gate. 
Beside him were three Fathers, 

Each in his chair of state : 
Fabius, whose nine stout grandsons 

That day were in the field ; 
And Manhiis, eldest of the twelve 

Who keep the Golden Shield ; 
And Sergius, the High Pontiff, 

For wisdom far renowned ; 
In all Etruria's colleges 

Was no such pontiff found. 
And all around the portal, 

And high above the wall, 
Stood a great throng of people, 

But sad and silent all, -- 
Young lads, and stooping elders, 

That might not bear the mail ; 
Matrons with lips that quivered. 

And maids with faces pale. 
Since the first gleam of daylight, 

Sempronius had not ceased 
To listen for the rushing 

Of horse-hoofs from the east. 
The mist of eve was rising, 

The sun was hastening down. 
When he was aware of a princely pair 

Fast pricking towards the town. 



214 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

So like they were, man never 

Saw twins so like before : 
Red with gore their armor was, 

Their steeds were red with gore. 

XXXVIII. 

" Hail to the great Asylum ! 

Hail to the hill-tops seven ! 
Hail to the fire that burns for aye, 

And the shield that fell from heaven ! 
This day, by Lake Regillus, 

Under the Porcian height. 
All in the lands of Tusculum, 

Was fought a glorious fight. 
To-morrow your Dictator 

Shall bring in triumph home 
The spoils of thirty cities 

To deck the shrines of Rome ! " 

XXXIX. 

Then burst from that great concourse 

A shout that shook the towers ; 
And some ran north, and some ran south, 

Crying, " The day is ours ! " 
But on rode these strange horsemen, 

With slow and lordly pace ; 
And none who saw their bearing 

Durst ask their name or race. 
On rode they to the Forum, 

While laurel-boughs and flowers, 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 21 5 

From house-tops and from windows, 

Fell on their crests in showers. 
When they drew nigh to Vesta, 

They vaulted down amain, 
And washed their horses in the well 

That springs by Vesta's fane \ 
And straight again they mounted, 

And rode to Vesta's door ; 
Then, like a blast, away they passed, 

And no man saw them more. 

XL. 

And all the people trembled, 

And pale grew every cheek ; 
And Sergius the High Pontiff 

Alone found voice to speak. 
*' The gods who live forever 

Have fought for Rome to-day ! 
These be the great Twin Brethren 

To whom the Dorians pray. 
Back comes the Chief in triumph, 

Who, in the hour of fight. 
Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren 

In harness on his right. 
Safe comes the ship to haven. 

Through billows and through gales. 
If once the Great Twin Brethren 

Sit shining on the sails. 
Wherefore they washed their horses 

In Vesta's holy well. 



2l6 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

Wherefore they rode to Vesta's door, 

I know, but may not tell. 
Here, hard by Vesta's temple, 

Build we a stately dome 
Unto the Great Twin Brethren 

Who fought so well for Rome. 
And when the months returning 

Bring back this day of fight, 
The proud Ides of Quintilis, 

Marked evermore with white, 
Unto the Great Twin Brethren 

Let all the people throng. 
With chaplets and with offerings. 

With music and with song ; 
And let the doors and windows 

Be hung with garlands all. 
And let the knights be summoned 

To Mars without the wall : 
Thence let them ride in purple 

With joyous trumpet-sound. 
Each mounted on his war-horse. 

And each with olive crowned, 
And pass in solemn order 

Before the sacred dome, 
Where dwell the Great Twin Brethren 

Who fought so well for Rome." 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 21/ 



VIRGINIA. 



A COLLECTION Consisting exclusively of war-songs 
would give an imperfect, or rather an erroneous, notion 
of the spirit of the old Latin ballads. The Patricians, 
during more than a century after the expulsion of the 
kings, held all the high military commands. A Ple- 
beian, even though, like Lucius Siccius, he were dis- 
tinguished by bis valor, and knowledge of war, could 
serve only in subordinate posts. A minstrel, there- 
fore, who wished to celebrate the early triumphs of his 
country, could hardly take any but Patricians for his 
heroes. The warriors who are mentioned in the two 
preceding lays, Horatius, Lartius, Herminius, Aulus 
Posthumius, yEbutius Elva, Sempronius Atratinus, Va- 
lerius Poplicola, were all members of the dominant 
order ; and a poet who was singing their praises, what- 
ever his own political opinions might be, would natu- 
rally abstain from insulting the class to which they 
belonged, and from reflecting on the system which had 
placed such men at the head of the legions of the 
commonwealth. 

But there was a class of compositions in which the 
great families were by no means so courteously treated. 
No parts of early Roman history are richer with poeti- 



21 8 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

cal coloring than those which relate to the long 
contest between the privileged houses and the com- 
monalty. The population of Rome was, from a very- 
early period, divided into hereditary castes, which, in- 
deed, readily united to repel foreign enemies, but which 
regarded each other, during many years, with bitter 
animosity. Between those castes, there was a barrier 
hardly less strong than that which, at Venice, parted 
the members of the Great Council from their country- 
men. In some respects, indeed, the line which sep- 
arated an Icilius or a Duilius from a Posthumius or a 
Fabius was even more deeply marked than that which 
separated the rower of a gondola from a Contarini or 
a Morosini. At Venice the distinction was merely 
civil. At Rome it was both civil and religious. Among 
the grievances under which the Plebeians suffered, 
three were felt as peculiarly severe. They were 
excluded from the highest magistracies ; they were 
excluded from all share in the public lands ; and they 
were ground down to the dust by partial and barbar- 
ous legislation touching pecuniary contracts. The 
ruling class in Rome was a moneyed class, and it 
made and administered the laws with a view solely 
to its own interest. Thus the relation between lender 
and borrower was mixed up with the relation between 
sovereign and subject. The great men held a large 
portion of the community in dependence by means of 
advances at enormous usury. The law of debt, framed 
by creditors, and for the protection of creditors, was 
the most horrible that has ever been known among 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 219 

men. The liberty, and even the life, of the insolvent 
were at the mercy of the Patrician money-lenders. 
Children often became slaves in consequence of the 
misfortunes of their parents. The debtor was impris- 
oned, not in a public jail under the care of impartial 
public functionaries, but in a private workhouse be- 
longing to the creditor. Frightful stories were told 
respecting these dungeons. It was said that torture 
and brutal violation were common ; that tight stocks, 
heavy chains, scanty measures of food, were used to 
punish wretches guilty of nothing but poverty; and 
that brave soldiers, whose breasts were covered vvith 
honorable scars, were often marked still more deeply 
on the back by the scourges of high-born usurers. 

The Plebeians were, however, not wholly without 
constitutional rights. From an early period they had 
been admitted to some share of political power. They 
were enrolled each in his century, and were allowed a 
share, considerable though not proportioned to their 
numerical strength, in the disposal of those high digni- 
ties from which they were themselves excluded. Thus 
their position bore some resemblance to that of the 
Irish Catholics during the interval between the year 
1792 and the year 1829. The Plebeians had also the 
privilege of annually appointing officers, named trib- 
unes, who had no active share in the government of 
the commonwealth, but who, by degrees, acquired a 
power formidable even to the ablest and most resolute 
consuls and dictators. The person of the tribune 
was inviolable ; and, though he could directly effect 
little, he could obstruct every thing. 



220 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

During more than a century after the institution of 
the tribuneship, the commons struggled manfully for 
the removal of the grievances under which they la- 
bored, and, in spite of many checks and reverses, 
succeeded in wringing concession after concession 
from the stubborn aristocracy. At length, in the year 
of the city 378, both parties mustered their whole 
strength for their last and most desperate conflict. 
The popular and active tribune, Caius Licinius, pro- 
posed the three memorable laws which are called by 
his name, and which were intended to redress the 
three great evils of which the Plebeians complained. 
He was supported, with eminent ability and firmness, 
by his colleague, Lucius Sextius. The struggle appears 
to have been the fiercest that ever in any community 
terminated without an appeal to arms. If such a con- 
test had raged in any Greek city, the streets would 
have run with blood. But, even in the paroxysms of 
faction, the Roman retained his gravity, his respect for 
law, and his tenderness for the lives of his fellow-citi- 
zfens. Year after year Licinius and Sextius were re- 
elected tribunes. Year after year, if the narrative 
which has come down to us is to be trusted, they 
continued to exert, to the full extent, their power of 
stopping the whole machine of government. No cu- 
rule magistrates could be chosen : no military muster 
could be held. We know too little of the state of 
Rome in those days to be able to conjecture how, dur- 
ing that long anarchy, the peace was kept, and ordi- 
nary justice administered between man and man. 






LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 221 

The animosity of both parties rose to the greatest 
height. The excitement, we may well suppose, would 
have been peculiarly intense at the annual election of 
tribunes. , On such occasions, there can be little doubt 
that the great families did all that could be done, by 
threats and caresses, to break the union of the Ple- 
beians. That union, howevef, proved indissoluble. At 
length the good cause triumphed. The Licinian laws 
were carried. Lucius Sextius was the first Plebeian 
consul ; Caius Licinius, the third. 

The results of this great change were singularly 
happy and glorious. Two centuries of prosperity, har- 
mony, and victory followed the reconciliation of the 
orders. Men who remembered Rome engaged in 
waging petty wars almost within sight of the Capitol, 
lived to see her the mistress of Italy. While the dis- 
abilities of the Plebeians continued, she was scarcely 
able to maintain her ground against the Volscians and 
Hernicans. When those disabilities were removed, 
she rapidly became more than a match for Carthage 
and Macedon. 

During the great Licinian contest the Plebeian poets 
were, doubtless, not silent. Even in modern times 
songs have been by no means without influence on 
pubhc affairs ; and we may therefore infer, that in a 
society where printing was unknown, and where books 
were rare, a pathetic or humorous party-ballad must 
have produced effects such as we can but faintly con- 
ceive. It is certain that satirical poems were common 
at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who 



222 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

lived at a distance from the seat of government, and 
took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to ■ 
their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse. 
The lampoons of the city were, doubtless, of a higher 
order ; and their sting was early felt by the nobility. 
For in the Twelve Tables, long before the time of the 
Licinian laws, a severe pmiishment was denounced 
against the citizen who should compose or recite 
verses reflecting on another.^ Satire is, indeed, the 
only sort of composition in which the Latin poets, 
whose works have come down to us, were not mere 
imitators of foreign models ; and it is, therefore, the 
only sort of composition in which they have never 
been rivalled. It was not, like their tragedy, their 
comedy, their epic and lyric poetry, a hot-house plant, 
which, in return for assiduous and skilful culture, gave 
only scanty and sickly fruits. It was hardy, and full of 
sap ; and in all the various juices which it yielded 
might be distinguished the flavor of the Ausonian soil. 
" Satire," said Quinctilian, with just pride, " is all our 
own." Satire sprang, in truth, naturally from the con- 
stitution of the Roman government and from the spidt 
of the Roman people, and, though at length subjected 
to metrical rules derived from Greece, retained to the 
last an essentially Roman character. Lucilius was the 
earUest satirist whose works were held in esteem under 



^ Cicero justly infers from this law, that there had been early Latin poets 
whose works had been lost before his time. " Quamquam id quidem etiam 
xii tabulae declarant, condi jam turn solitum esse carmen, quod ne licere fieri 
ad alterius injuriam lege sanxerunt." — Tusc. iv. 2. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 223 

• the Caesars. But, many years before Lucilius was born, 
Nzevius had been flung into a dungeon, and guarded 
there with circumstances of unusual rigor, on account 
of the bitter hnes in which he had attacked the great 
Csecihan family.^ The genius and spirit of the Roman 
satirists survived the hberty of their country, and were 
not extinguished by the cruel despotism of the Julian 
and Flavian Emperors. The great poet, who told the 
story of Domitian's turbot, was the legitimate suc- 
cessor of those forgotten minstrels whose songs ani- 
mated the factions of the infant Republic. 

Those minstrels, as Niebuhr has remarked, appear 
to have generally taken the popular side. We can 
hardly be mistaken in supposing, that, at the great 
crisis of the civil conflict, they employed themselves 
in versifying all the most powerful and virulent speeches 
of the tribunes, and in heaping abuse on the leaders 
of the aristocracy. Every personal defect, every do- 
mestic scandal, every tradition dishonorable to a noble 
house, would be sought out, brought into notice, and 
exaggerated. The illustrious head of the aristocratical 
party, Marcus Furius Camillus, might perhaps be, in 
some measure, protected by his venerable age, and by 
the memory of his great services to the State. But 
Appius Claudius Crassus enjoyed no such immunity. 
He was descended from a long line of ancestors dis- 
tinguished by their haughty demeanor, and by the 
inflexibility with which they had withstood all the 



^ Plautus, Miles Gloriosus. Aulus Gellius, 



111. 3, 



224 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

demands of the Plebeian order. While the political 
conduct and the deportment of the Claudian nobles 
drew upon them the fiercest public hatred, they were 
accused of wanting, if any credit is due to the early 
history of Rome, a class of qualities which, in a mili- 
tary commonwealth, is sufficient to cover a multitude 
of offences. The chiefs of the family appear to have 
been eloquent, versed in civil business, and learned 
after the fashion of their age ; but in war they were 
not distinguished by skill or valor. Some of them, as 
if conscious where their weakness lay, had, when fill- 
ing the highest magistracies, taken internal administra- 
tion as their department of public business, and left 
the mihtary command to their colleagues.' One of 
them had been intrusted with an army, and had failed 
ignominiously.^ None of them had been honored 
with a triumph. None of them had achieved any 
martial exploit, such as those by which Lucius Quinc- 
tius Cincinnatus, Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, Aulus 
Cornelius Cossus, and, above all, the great Camillus, 
had extorted the reluctant esteem of the multitude. 
During the Licinian conflict, Appius Claudius Crassus 
signalized himself by the ability and severity with which 
he harangued against the two great agitators. He 
would naturally, therefore, be the favorite mark of the 
Plebeian satirists ; nor would they have been at a loss 
to find a point on which he was open to attack. 



1 In the years of the city 260, 304, and 330. 

2 In the year of the city 282. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 22$ 

His grandfather, called, like himself, Appius Clau- 
dius, had left a name as much detested as that of Sex- 
tus Tarquinius. This elder Appius had been consul 
more than seventy years before the introduction of 
the Licinian laws. By availing himself of a singular 
crisis in public feeling, he had obtained the consent 
of the commons to the abolition of the tribuneship, 
and had been the chief of that Council of Ten to which 
the whole direction of the State had been committed. 
In a few months his administration had become uni- 
versally odious. It had been swept away by an irre- 
sistible outbreak of popular fury, and its memory was 
still held in popular abhorrence by the whole city. 
The immediate cause of the downfall of this execrable 
government was said to have been an attempt made 
by Appius Claudius upon the chastity of a beautiful 
young girl of humble birth. The story ran, that the 
decemvir, unable to succeed by bribes and soUcita- 
tions, resorted to an outrageous act of tyranny. A vile 
dependent of the Claudian house laid claim to the 
damsel as his slave. The case was brought before the 
tribunal of Appius. The wicked magistrate, in defi- 
ance of the clearest proofs, gave judgment for the 
claimant. But the girl's father, a brave soldier, saved 
her from servitude and dishonor by stabbing her to 
the heart in the sight of the whole Forum. That blow 
was the signal for a general explosion. Camp and city 
rose at once ; the Ten were pulled down ; the trib- 
uneship was re-established ; and Appius escaped the 
hands of the executioner, only by a voluntary death. 



226 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

It can hardly be doubted that a story so admirably 
adapted to the purposes both of the poet and of the 
demagogue would be eagerly seized upon by minstrels 
burning with hatred against the Patrician order, against 
the Claudian house, and especially against the grand- 
son and namesake of the infamous decemvir. 

In order that the reader may judge fairly of these 
fragments of the lay of Virginia, he must imagine 
himself a Plebeian who has just voted for the re-elec- 
tion of Sextius and Licinius. All the power of the 
Patricians has been exerted to throw out the two great 
champions of the commons. Every Posthumius, 
^Emilius, and Cornelius has used his influence to the 
utmost. Debtors have been let out of the workhouses 
on condition of voting against the men of the people ; 
clients have been posted to hiss and interrupt the fa- 
vorite candidates ; Appius Claudius Crassus has spoken 
with more than his usual eloquence and asperity ; all 
has been in vain ; Licinius and Sextius have a fifth 
time carried all the tribes ; work is suspended ; the 
booths are closed ; the Plebeians bear on their shoul- 
ders the two champions of liberty through the Forum. 
Just at this moment it is announced that a popular 
poet, a zealous adherent of the tribunes, has made a 
new song, which will cut the Claudian nobles to the 
heart. The crowd gathers rou'nd him, and calls on 
him to recite it. He takes his stand on the spot, 
where, according to tradition, Virginia, more than sev- 
enty years ago, was seized by the pandar of Appius, 
and he begins his story. 



J 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 22/ 



VIRGINIA. 

FRAGMENTS OF A LAY SUNG IN THE FORUINI ON THE DAY 
WHEREON LUCIUS SEXTIUS SEXTINUS LATERANUS AND 
CAIUS LICINIUS CAL\njS STOLO WERE ELECTED TRIBUNES 
OF THE COMMONS THE FIFTH TIME, IN THE YEAR OF 
THE CITY CCCLXXXII. 



Ye good men of the Commons, with loving hearts 

and true, 
Who stand by the bold Tribunes that still have stood 

by you, 
Come, make a circle round me, and mark my tale with 

care, 
A tale of what Rome once hath borne, of what Rome 

yet may bear. 
This is no Grecian fable, of fountains running wine. 
Of maids with snaky tresses, or sailors turned to swine. 
Here, in this very Forum, under the noonday sun. 
In sight of all the 'people, the bloody deed was done. 
Old men still creep among us who saw that fearful day. 
Just seventy years and seven ago, when the wicked 

Ten bare sway. 

Of all the wicked Ten, still the names are held 
accursed ; 
And of all the wicked Ten, Appius Claudius was the 
worst. 



228 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

He stalked along the Forum like King Tarquin in his 

pride : 
Twelve axes waited on him, six marching on a side. 
The townsmen shrank to right and left, and eyed 

askance with fear 
His lowering brow, his curling mouth which always 

seemed to sneer ; 
That brow of hate, that mouth of scorn, marks all the 

kindred still ; 
For never was there Claudius yet but wished the Com- 
mons ill : 
Nor lacks he fit attendance ; for close behind his heels, 
With outstretched chin, and crouching pace, the client 

Marcus steals. 
His loins girt up to run with speed, be the errand what 

it may, 
, And the smile flickering on his cheek, for aught his 

lord may say. 
Such varlets pimp and jest for hire among the lying 

Greeks : 
Such varlets still are paid to hoot when brave Licinius 

speaks. 
Where'er ye shed the honey, the. buzzing flies will 

crowd ; 
Where'er ye fling the carrion, the raven's croak is 

loud; 
Where'er down Tiber garbage floats, the greedy pike 

ye see ; 
And wheresoe'er such lord is found, such client still 

will be. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 229 

Just then, as through one cloudless chmk m a black 

stormy sky 
Shines out the dewy morning-star, a fair young girl 

came by 
With her small tablets in her hand, and her satchel on 

her arm, 
Home she went bounding from the school, nor 

dreamed of shame or harm ; 
And past those dreaded axes she innocently ran. 
With bright, frank brow that had not learned to blush 

at gaze of man ; 
And up the Sacred Street she turned; and, as she 

danced along, 
She warbled gayly to herself lines of the good old song. 
How for a sport the princes came spurring from the 

camp, 
And found Lucrece, combing the fleece, under the 

midnight lamp. 
The maiden sang as sings the lark, when up he darts 

his flight, 
From his nest in the green April corn, to meet the 

morning light ; 
And Appius heard her sweet young voice, and saw her 

sweet young face, 
And loved her with the accursed love of his accursed 

race. 
And all along the Forum, and up the Sacred Street, 
His vulture eye pursued the trip of those small glan- 
cing feet. 



230 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Over the Alban mountains the hght of morning 

broke ; 
From all the roofs of the Seven Hills curled the thin 

wreaths of smoke ; 
The city-gates were opened ; the Forum all alive, 
With buyers and with sellers was humming like a 

hive ; 
Blithely on brass and timber the craftsman's stroke was 

ringing, 
And blithely o'er her panniers the market-girl was 

singing, 
And blithely young Virginia came smiling from her 

home. 
Ah ! woe for young Virginia, the sweetest maid in 

Rome ! 
With her small tablets in her hand, and her satchel on 

her arm. 
Forth she went bounding to the school, nor dreamed 

of shame or harm. 
She crossed the Forum shining with stalls in alleys gay. 
And just had reached the very spot whereon I stand 

this day. 
When up the varlet Marcus came ; not such as when 

ere while 
He crouched behind his patron's heels with the true 

client smile : 
He came with lowering forehead, swollen features, and 

clinched fist. 
And strode across Virginia's path, and caught her by 

the wrist. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 23 1 

Hard strove the frighted maiden, and screamed with 

look aghast ; 
And at her scream, from right and left the folk came 

running fast, — 
The money-changer Crispiis, with his thin silver hairs ; 
And Hanno from the stately booth glittering with Punic 

wares ; 
And the strong smith Muraena, grasping a half-forged 

brand ; 
And Volero the flesher, his cleaver in his hand. 
All came in wrath and wonder, for all knew that fair 

child ; 
And, as she passed them twice a day, all kissed their 

hands, and smiled : 
And the strong smith Muraena gave Marcus such a 

blow, 
The caitiff reeled three paces back, and let the maiden 

go. 
Yet glared he fiercely round him, and growled in 

harsh, fell tone, 
*^ She's mine, and I will have her : I seek but for mine 

own. 
She is my slave, born in my house, and stolen away, 

and sold. 
The year of the sore sickness, ere she was twelve hours 

old. 
'Twas in the sad September, the month of wail and 

fright. 
Two augurs were borne forth that morn : the consul 

died ere night. 



232 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY, 

I wait on Appius Claudius, I waited on his sire : 
Let him who works the cHent wrong beware the pa- 
tron's ire ! " 

So spake the varlet Marcus, and dread and silence 

came 
On all the people at the sound of the great Claudian 

name. 
For then there was no tribune to speak the word of 

might, 
Which makes the rich man tremble, and guards the 

poor man's right. 
There was no brave Licinius, no honest Sextius then ; 
But all the city, in great fear, obeyed the wicked 

Ten. 
Yet ere the varlet Marcus again might seize the maid, 
Who clung tight to Muraena's skirt, and sobbed, and 

shrieked for aid, 
Forth through the throng of gazers the young Icilius 

pressed, 
And stamped his foot, and rent his gown, and smote 

upon his breast, 
And sprang upon that column, by many a minstrel 

sung, 
Whereon three mouldering helmets, three rusting 

swords, are hung. 
And beckoned to the people, and in bold voice and 

clear 
Poured thick and fast the burning words which tyrants 

quake to hear. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 233 

"Now, by your children's cradles, now, by your 

fathers' graves, 
Be men to-day, Quirites, or be forever slaves ! 
For this did Servius give us laws? For this did 

Lucrece bleed? 
For this was the great vengeance wrought on Tarquin's 

evil seed? 
For this did those false sons make red the axes of their 

sire? 
For this did Scaevola's right hand hiss in the Tuscan 

fire? 
Shall the vile fox-earth awe the race that stormed the 

lion's den? 
Shall we, who could not brook one lord, crouch to the 

wicked Ten ? 
Oh for that ancient spirit which curbed the Senate's 

will! 
Oh for the tents which in old time whitened the Sacred 

Hill ! 
In those brave days our fathers stood firmly side by side ; 
They faced the Marcian fury ; they tamed the Fabian 

pride ; 
They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from 

Rome ; 
They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shivered fasces 

home. 
But what their care bequeathed us our madness flung 

away : 
All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in 

a day. 



234 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Exult, ye proud Patricians ! The hard- fought fight is 

o'er. 
We strove for honors — 'twas in vain ; for freedom — 

'tis no more. 
No crier to the poUing summons the eager throng : 
No tribune breathes the word of might that guards the 

weak from wrong. 
Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath 

your will. 
Riches and lands, and power and state — ye have 

them — keep them still. 
Still keep the holy fillets ; still keep the purple gown, 
The axes, and the curule chair, the car, and laurel- 
crown. 
Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is 

done. 
Still fill your garners from the soil which our good 

swords have won. 
Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leech-craft may not 

cure, 
Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the 

poor. 
Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers 

bore; 
Still let your dens of torment be noisome as of yore ; 
No fire when Tiber freezes ; no air in dog-star heat ; 
And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for 

free-born feet; 
Heap heavier still the fetters ; bar closer still the grate ; 
Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruel hate. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 235 

But, by the Shades beneath us, and by the Gods 

above, 
Add not unto your cruel hate your yet more cruel 

love ! 
Have ye not graceful ladies, whose spotless hneage 

springs 
From consuls, and high pontiffs, and ancient Alban 

kings,— 
Ladies, who deign not on our paths to set their tender 

feet. 
Who from their cars look down with scorn upon the 

wondering street. 
Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles be- 
hold, 
And breathe of Capuan odors, and shine with Spanish 

gold? 
Then leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to hfe, — 
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of 

wife. 
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vexed 

soul endures. 
The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as 

yours. 
Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast 

with pride ; 
Still let the bridegroom's arms infold an unpolluted 

bride. 
Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame. 
That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's 

blood to flame, 



236 READINGS FROM MAC A UL AY. 

■Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our de- 
spair, 

And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the 
wretched dare." 



Straight^vay Virginius led the maid a little space 

aside, 
To where the reeking shambles stood, piled up with 

horn and hide, 
Close to yon low dark archway, where, in a crimson 

flood. 
Leaps down to the great sewer the gurgling stream of 

blood. 
Hard by, a flesher on a block had laid his whittle 

down : 
Virginius caught the whittle up, and hid it in his 

gown. 
And then his eyes grew very dim, and his throat began 

to swell. 
And in a hoarse, changed voice he spake, " Farewell, 

sweet chfld ! Farewell ! 
Oh ! how I love my darling ! Though stern I some- 
times be. 
To thee, thou know'st I was not so. A\Tio could be 

so to thee? 
And how my darling loved me ! How glad she was 

to hear 
My footstep on the threshold when I came back last 

year ! 



i 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 237 

And how she danced with pleasure to see my civic 

crown, 
And took my sword, and hung it up, and brought me 

forth my gown ! 
Now all those things are over — yes, all thy pretty 

ways, 
Thy needlework, thy prattle, thy snatches of old lays ; 
And none will grieve when I go forth, or smile when I 

return. 
Or watch beside the old man's bed, or weep upon his 

urn. 
The house that was the happiest within the Roman 

walls, 
The house that envied not the wealth of Capua's mar- 
ble halls. 
Now, for the brightness of thy smile, must have eternal 

gloom. 
And for the music of thy voice, the silence of the 

tomb. 
The time is come. See how he points his eager hand 

this way ! 
See how his eyes gloat on thy grief, like a kite's upon 

the prey ! 
With all his wit, he litde deems, that spumed, be- 
trayed,, bereft, 
Thy father hath in his despair one fearful refuge left. 
He little deems that in this hand I clutch what still 

can save 
Thy genUe youth from taunts and blows, the portion 
of the slave ; 



238 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

Yea, and from nameless evil, that passeth taunt and 

blow — 
Foul outrage which thou knowest not, whicli thou shalt 

never know. 
Then clasp me round the neck once more, and give 

me one more kiss ; 
And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way 

but this." 
With that he lifted high the steel, and smote her in 

the side; 
And in her blood she sank to earth, and with one sob 

she died. 

Then for a little moment, all people held their 

breath ; 
And through the crowded Forum was stillness as of 

death ; 
And in another moment brake forth from one and all 
A cry as if the Volscians were coming o'er the wall. 
Some with averted faces shrieking fled home amain ; 
Some ran to call a leech; and some ran to hft the 

slain ; 
Some felt her lips and Httle wrist, if Hfe might there be 

found ; 
And some tore up their garments fast, and strove to 

stanch the wound. 
In vain they ran, and felt, and stanched; for never 

truer blow 
That good right arm had dealt in fight against a Vol- 

scian foe. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 239 

When Appius Claudius saw that deed, he shuddered, 

and sank down, 
And hid his face some httle space with the corner of 

his gown. 
Till, with white lips and bloodshot eyes, Virginius 

tottered nigh. 
And stood before the judgment-seat, and held the 

knife on high. 
" Oh ! dwellers in the nether gloom, avengers of the 

slain. 
By this dear blood I cry to you, do right between us 

twain ; 
And even as Appius Claudius hath dealt by me and 

mine. 
Deal you by Appius Claudius and all the Claudian line ! " 
So spake the slayer of his child, and turned, and went 

his way ; 
But first he cast one haggard glance to where the 

body lay, 
And writhed, and groaned a fearful groan, and then, 

with steadfast feet. 
Strode right across the market-place unto the Sacred 

Street. 

Then up sprang Appius Claudius : " Stop him ! 

alive or dead ! 
Ten thousand pounds of copper to the man who 

brings his head ! " 
He looked upon his clients, but none would work his will. 
He looked upon his lictors ; but they trembled, and 

stood still. 



240 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

And, as Virginius through the press his way in silence 

cleft, 
Ever the mighty multitude fell back to right and left. 
And he hath passed in safety unto his woeful home, 
And there ta'en horse to tell the camp what deeds are 

done in Rome. 

By this the flood of people was swollen from every 

side, 
And streets and porches round were filled with that 

o'erflowing tide ; 
And close around the body gathered a little train 
Of them that were the nearest and dearest to the 

slain. 
They brought a bier, and hung it with many a cypress 

crown ; 
And gently they uplifted her, and gently laid her 

down. 
The face of Appius Claudius wore the Claudian scowl 

and sneer ; 
And in the Claudian note he cried, " What doth this 

rabble here? 
Have they no crafts to mind at home, that hitherward 

they stray? 
Ho, lictors ! clear the market-place, and fetch the 

corpse away ! " 
The voice of grief and fury till then had not been 

loud ; 
But a deep, sullen murmur wandered among the 

crowd, 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 24 1 

Like the moaning noise that goes before the whirhvind 

on the deep, 
Or the growl of a fierce watch-dog but half aroused 

from sleep. 
But when the lictors at that word, tall yeomen all and 

strong, 
Each with his axe and sheaf of twigs, went do\Mi into 

the throng. 
Those old men say, w^ho saw that day of sorrow and 

of sin. 
That in the Roman Forum was never such a din. 
The w^ailing, hooting, cursing, the howls of grief and 

hate, 
Were heard beyond the Pincian Hill, beyond the Latin 

Gate. 
But close around the body, where stood the little train 
Of them that were the nearest and dearest to the slain, 
No cries were there, but teeth set fast, low whispers, 

and black frowns. 
And breaking up of benches, and girding up of gowns. 
'Twas well the hctors might not pierce to where the 

maiden lay. 
Else surely had they been all twelve torn limb from 

limb that day. 
Right glad they were to struggle back, blood stream- 
ing from their heads, 
\Mth axes all in splinters, and raiment all in shreds. 
Then Appius Claudius gnawed his lij), and the blood 

left his cheek ; 
And thrice he Ijeckoned with his hand, and thrice he 

strove to speak : 



242 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

And thrice the tossing Forum set up a frightful 

yell- 
" See, see, thou dog ! what thou hast done ; and hide 

thy shame in hell ! 
Thou that wouldst make our maidens slaves must first 

make slaves of men. 
Tribunes ! Hurrah for Tribunes ! Down with the 

wicked Ten ! " 
And straightway, thick as hailstones, came whizzing 

through the air. 
Pebbles and bricks and potsherds, all round the curule 

chair ; 
And upon Appius Claudius great fear and trembling 

came, 
For never was a Claudius yet brave against aught but 

shame. 
Though the great houses love us not, we own, to do 

them right. 
That the great houses, all save one, have borne them 

well in fight. 
Still Caius of Corioli, his triumphs and his wrongs. 
His vengeance and his mercy, live in our camp-fire 

songs. 
Beneath the yoke of Furius oft have Gaul and Tuscan 

bowed. 
And Rome may bear the pride of him of whom her- 
self is proud. 
But evermore a Claudius shrinks from a stricken field, 
And changes color like a maid at sight of sword and 

shield. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 243 

The Claudian triumphs all were won within the city 

towers : 
The Claudian yoke was never pressed on any necks 

but ours. 
A Cossus, like a wild-cat, springs ever at the face ; 
A Fabius rushes Hke a boar against the shouting 

chase ; 
But the vile Claudian litter, raging with currish spite, 
Still yelps and snaps at those who run, still runs from 

those who smite. 
So now 'twas seen of Appius. When stones began to 

fly, 

He shook, and crouched, and wrung his hands, and 

smote upon his thigh. 
" Kind clients, honest lictors, stand by me in this 

fray ! 
Must I be torn in pieces ? Home, home, the nearest 

way ! " 
While yet he spake, and looked around with a bewil- 
dered stare, 
Four sturdy lictors put their necks beneath the curule 

chair ; 
And fourscore clients on the left, and fourscore on 

the right. 
Arrayed themselves with swords and staves, and loins 

girt up for fight. 
But, though without or staff or sword, so furious was 

the throng. 
That scarce the train with might and main could bring 

their lord along. 



244 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

Twelve times the crowd made at him ; five times they 

seized his gown ; 
Small chance was his to rise again, if once they got 

him down : 
And sharper came the pelting ; and evermore the yell, — 
"Tribunes! we will have Tribunes!" — rose with a 

louder swell ; 
And the chair tossed as tosses a bark with tattered sail 
When raves the Adriatic beneath an eastern gale. 
When the Calabrian sea-marks are lost in clouds of 

spume, 
And the great Thunder-Cape has donned his veil of 

inky gloom. 
One stone hit Appius in the mouth, and one beneath 

the ear; 
And ere he reached Mount Palatine, he swooned with 

pain and fear. 
His cursed head, that he was wont to hold so high 

with pride, 
Now, like a drunken man's, hung down, and swayed 

from side to side ; 
And when his stout retainers had brought him to his 

door, 
His face and neck were all one cake of filth and 

clotted gore. 
As Appius Claudius was that day, so may his grandson 

be! 
God send Rome one such other sight, and send me 

there to see ! 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME, 245 



THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS. 



It can hardly be necessary to remind any reader, 
that, according to the popular tradition, Romulus, after 
he had slain his granduncle Amulius, and restored his 
grandfather Numitor, determined to quit Alba, the 
hereditary domain of the Sylvian princes, and found 
a new city. The gods, it was added, vouchsafed the 
clearest signs of the favor with which they regarded 
the enterprise, and of the high destinies reserved for 
the young colony. 

This event was likely to be a favorite theme of the 
old Latin minstrels. They would naturally attribute 
the project of Romulus to some divine intimation of 
the power and prosperity which it was decreed that 
his city should attain. They would probably intro- 
duce seers foretelling the victories of unborn consuls 
and dictators, and the last great victory would gen- 
erally occupy the most conspicuous place in the pre- 
diction. There is nothing strange in the supposition 
that the poet who was employed to celebrate the first 
great triumph of the Romans over the Greeks might 
throw his song of exultation into this form. 

The occasion was one likely to excite the strongest 
feelings of national pride. A great outrage had been 



246 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

followed by a great retribution. Seven years before 
this time, Lucius Posthumius Megellus, who sprang 
from one of the noblest houses of Rome, and had 
been thrice consul, was sent ambassador to Tarentum, 
with charge to demand reparation for grievous inju- 
ries. The Tarentines gave him audience in their 
theatre, where he addressed them in such Greek as he 
could command, which, we may well believe, was not 
exactly such as Cineas would have spoken. An ex- 
quisite sense of the ridiculous belonged to the Greek 
character, and closely connected with this faculty was 
a strong propensity to flippancy and impertinence. 
When Posthumius placed an accent wrong, his hear- 
ers burst into a laugh. When he remonstrated, they 
hooted him, and called him barbarian, and at length 
hissed him off the stage as if he had been a bad actor. 
As the grave Roman retired, a buffoon, who, from his 
constant drunkenness, was nicknamed the Pint-pot, 
came up with gestures of the grossest indecency, and 
bespattered the senatorial gown with filth. Posthu- 
mius turned round to the multitude, and held up the 
gown, as if appealing to the universal law of nations. 
The sight only increased the insolence of the Taren- 
tines. They clapped their hands, and set up a shout 
of laughter which shook the theatre. " Men of Tar- 
entum," said Posthumius, "it will take not a Httle 
blood to wash this gown." ' 

Rome, in consequence of this insult, declared war 

I Dion. Hal. De Legalionibus. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 24/ 

against the Tarentines. The Tarentines sought for 
aUies beyond the Ionian Sea. Pyrrhus, king of Epi- 
rus, came to their help with a large army ; and, for 
the first time, the two great nations of antiquity were 
fairly matched against each other. 

The fame of Greece in arms, as well as in arts, was 
then at the height. Half a century earlier, the career 
of Alexander had excited the admiration and terror 
of all nations from the Ganges to the pillars of Her- 
cules. Royal houses, founded by Macedonian cap- 
tains, still reigned at Antioch and Alexandria. That 
barbarian warriors, led by barbarian chiefs, should win 
a pitched battle against Greek valor guided by Greek 
science, seemed as incredible as it would now seem 
that the Burmese or the Siamese should, in the open 
plain, put to flight an equal number of the best Eng- 
lish troops. The Tarentines were convinced that 
their countrymen were irresistible in war, and this 
conviction had emboldened them to treat with the 
grossest indignity one whom they regarded as the rep- 
resentative of an inferior race. Of the Greek gen- 
erals then living, Pyrrhus was indisputably the first. 
Among the troops who were trained in the Greek 
discipline, his Epirotes ranked high. His expedition 
to Italy was a turning-point in the history of the 
world. He found there a people, who, far inferior to 
the Athenians and Corinthians in the fine arts, in the 
speculative sciences, and in all the refinements of life, 
were the best soldiers on the face of the earth. Their 
arms, their gradations of rank, their order of battle, 



248 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

their method of intrenchment, were all of Latin ori- 
gin, and had all been gradually brought near to per- 
fection, not by the study of foreign models, but by 
the genius and experience of many generations of 
great native commanders. The first words which 
broke from the king, when his practised eye had sur- 
veyed the Roman encampment, were full of meaning : 
" These barbarians," he said, " have nothing barbarous 
in their military arrangements." He was at first vic- 
torious, for h;s own talents were superior to those 
of the captains who were opposed to him ; and the 
Romans were not prepared for the onset of the ele- 
phants of the East, which were then for the first time 
seen in Italy, — moving mountains, with long snakes 
for hands.' But the victories of the Epirotes were 
fiercely disputed, dearly purchased, and altogether 
unprofitable. At length, Manius Curius Dentatus, 
who had in his first consulship won two triumphs, was 
again placed at the head of the Roman common- 
wealth, and sent to encounter the invaders. A great 
battle was fought near Beneventum. Pyrrhus was 
completely defeated. He repassed the sea ; and the 
world learned, with amazement, that a people had 
been discovered, who, in fair fighting, were superior 
to the best troops that had been drilled on the system 
of Parmenio and Antigonus. 

The conquerors had a good right to exult in their 
success, for their glory was all their own. They had 

I Anguimanns is the old Latin epithet for an elephant. Lucretius, ii. 
538 1302. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT 1^0 ME. 249 

not learned from their enemy how to conquer him. It 
was with their own national arms, and in their own 
national battle-array, that they had overcome weaj^ons 
and tactics long believed to be invincible. The piliim 
and the broadsword had vanquished the Macedonian 
spear. The legion had broken the Macedonian pha- 
lanx. Even the elephants, when the surprise produced 
by their first appearance was over, could cause no 
disorder in the steady yet flexible battahons of Rome. 
It is said by Florus, and may easily be believed, that 
the triumph far surpassed in magnificence any that 
Rome had previously seen. The only spoils which 
Papirius Cursor and Fabius Maximus could exhibit 
were flocks and herds, wagons of rude structure, and 
heaps of spears and helmets. But now, for the first 
time, the riches of Asia and the arts of Greece adorned 
a Roman pageant. Plate, fine stuffs, costly furniture, 
rare animals, exquisite paintings and sculptures, formed 
part of the procession. At the banquet would be as- 
sembled a crowd of warriors and statesmen, among 
whom Manius Curius Dentatus would take the highest 
room. Caius Fabricius Luscinus, then, after two con- 
sulships and two triumphs, censor of the common- 
wealth, would, doubtless, occupy a place of honor at 
the board. In situations less conspicuous probably 
lay some of those who were, a few years later, the ter- 
ror of Carthage : Caius Duilius, the founder of the 
maritime greatness of his country; Marcus Atilius 
Regulus, who owed to defeat a renown far higher -than 
that which he had derived from his victories; and 



250 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Caius Lutatius Catulus, who, while suffering from a 
grievous wound, fought the great battle of the Agates, 
and brought the First Punic War to a triumphant close. 
It is impossible to recount the names of these eminent 
citizens, without reflecting that they were all, without 
exception. Plebeians, and would, but for the ever- 
memorable struggle maintained by Caius Licinius and 
Lucius Sextius, have been doomed to hide in obscurity, 
or to waste in civil broils the capacity and energy 
which prevailed against Pyrrhus and Hamilcar. 

On such a day we may suppose that the patriotic 
enthusiasm of a Latin poet would vent itself in reiter- 
ated shouts of lo triumphe, such as were uttered by 
Horace on a far less exciting occasion, and in boasts 
resembling those which Virgil put into the mouth of 
Anchises. The superiority of some foreign nations, 
and especially of the Greeks, in the lazy arts of peace, 
would be admitted with disdainful candor; but pre- 
eminence in all the qualities which fit a people to 
subdue and govern mankind would be claimed for the 
Romans. 

The following lay belongs to the latest age of Latin 
ballad-poetry. Naevius and Livius Andronicus were 
probably among the children whose mothers held 
them up to see the chariot of Curius go by. The 
minstrel who sang on that day might possibly have 
lived to read the first hexameters of Ennius, and to 
see the first comedies of Plautus. His poem, as might 
be expected, shows a much wider acquaintance with 
the geography, manners, and productions of remote 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 25 1 

nations, than would have been found in compositions 
of the age of Camillus. But he troubles himself little 
about dates ; and having heard travellers talk with ad- 
miration of the Colossus of Rhodes, and of the struc- 
tures and gardens with which the Macedonian kings 
of Syria had embellished their residence on the banks 
of the Orontes, he has never thought of inquiring 
whether these things existed in the age of Romulus. 



252 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 



THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS. 

A LAY SUNG AT THE BANQUET IN THE CAPITOL, ON THE 
DAY WHEREON MANIUS CURIUS DENTATUS, A SECOND 
TIME CONSUL, TRIUMPHED OVER KING PYRRHUS AND THE 
TARENTINES, IN THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCCLXXIX. 



Now slain is King Amulius 

Of tlie great Sylvian line, 
Who reigned in Alba Longa, 

On the throne of Aventine. 
Slain is the Pontiff Gamers, 

Who spake the words of doom ; 
" The children to the Tiber ; 

The mother to the tomb." 

n. 

In Alba's lake no fisher 

His net to-day is flinging ; 
On the dark rind of Alba's oaks 

To-day no axe is ringing ; 
The yoke hangs o'er the manger ; 

The scythe lies in the hay ; 
Through all the Alban villages, 

No work is done to-day. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 253 

III. 

And every Alban burgher 

Hath donned his whitest gown ; 
And every head in Alba 

Weareth a poplar crown ; 
And every Alban door-post 

With boughs and flowers is gay, 
For to-day the dead are living : 

The lost are found to-day. 

IV. 

They were doomed by a bloody king ; 

They were doomed by a lying priest ; 
They were cast on the raging flood ; 

They were tracked by the raging beast ; 
Paging beast and raging flood 

Alike have spared the prey, 
And to-day the dead are living : 

The lost are found to-day. 



The troubled river knew them. 

And smoothed his yellow foam, 
And gently rocked the cradle 

That bore the fate of Rome. 
The ravening she-wolf knew them. 

And licked them o'er and o'er, 
And gave them of her own fierce milk. 

Rich with raw flesh and gore. 



254 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

Twenty winters, twenty springs, 
Since then have rolled away ; 

And to-day the dead are living : 
The lost are found to-day. 



VI. 

Blithe it was to see the twins, 

Right goodly youths, and tall, 
Marching from Alba Longa 

To their old grandsire's hall. 
Along their path fresh garlands 

Are hung from tree to tree : 
Before them stride the pipers, 

Piping a note of glee. 



vn. 

On the right goes Romulus, 

With arms to the elbows red. 
And in his hand a broadsword. 

And on the blade a head — 
A head in an iron helmet, 

With horse-hair hanging down ; 
A shaggy head, a swarthy head. 

Fixed in a ghastly frown ; 
The head of King Amulius 

Of the great Sylvian line. 
Who reigned in Alba Longa, 

On the throne of Aventine. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 2$$ 

VIII. 

On the left side goes Remus, 

With wrists and fingers red, 
And in his hand a boar-spear, 

And on the point a head — 
A \\Tinkled head and aged. 

With silver beard and hair. 
And holy fillets round it, 

Such as the pontiffs wear ; 
The head of ancient Gamers, 

Who spake the words of doom : 
" The children to the Tiber ; 

The mother to the tomb."' 



IX. 

Two and two behind the twins 

Their trusty comrades go. 
Four and forty valiant men, 

With club and axe and bow. 
On each side every hamlet 

Pours forth its joyous crowd. 
Shouting lads, and baying dogs, 

And children laughing loud. 
And old men weeping fondly 

As Rhea's boys go by, 
And maids who shriek to see the heads. 

Yet, shrieking, press more nigh. 



256 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 



X. 

So they marched along the lake : 
They marched by fold and stall, 

By cornfield and by vineyard, 
Unto the old man's hall. 

XI. 

In the hall-gate sate Capys, 

Capys, the .sightless seer : 
From head to foot he trembled 

As Romulus drew near. 
And up stood stiff his thin white hair, 

And his blind eyes flashed fire : 
"Hail ! foster-child of the wonderous nurse ! 

Hail ! son of the wonderous sire ! 

XII. 

" But thou — what dost thou here 

In the old man's peaceful hall? 
What doth the eagle in the coop, 

The bison in the stall? 
Our corn fills many a garner ; 

Our vines clasp many a tree ; 
Our flocks are white on many a hill, — 

But these are not for thee. 

XIII. 

" For thee no treasure ripens 
In the Tartessian mine ; 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 25/ 

For thee no ship brings precious bales 

Across the Libyan brine ; 
Thou shalt not drink from amber ; 

Thou shalt not rest on down ; 
Arabia shall not steep thy locks, 

Nor Sidon tinge thy gown. 

XIV. 

" Leave gold and myrrh and jewels, 

Rich table, and soft bed, 
To them who of man's seed are born. 

Whom woman's milk have fed. 
Thou wast not made for lucre, 

For pleasure, nor for rest ; 
Thou, that art sprung from the War-god's loins, 

And hast tugged at the she- wolf s breast. 

XV. 

" From sunrise unto sunset 

All earth shall hear thy fame : 
A glorious city thou shalt build. 

And name it by thy name ; 
And there, unquenched through ages. 

Like Vesta's sacred fire, 
Shall live the spirit of thy nurse, 

The spirit of thy sire. 

XVI. 

*'■ The ox toils through the furrow, 
Obedient to the goad ; 



258. READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

The patient ass, up flinty paths, 
Plods with his weary load ; 

With whine and bound, the spaniel 
His master's whistle hears ; 

And the sheep yields her patiently 
To the loud-clashing shears. 

XVII. 

" But thy nurse will hear no master ; 

Thy nurse will bear no load ; 
And woe to them that shear her, 

And woe to them that goad ! 
When all the pack, loud baying, 

Her bloody lair surrounds, 
She dies in silence, biting hard, 

Amidst the dying hounds. 

XVIII. 

" Pomona loves the orchard. 

And Liber loves the vine ; 
And Pales loves the straw-built shed 

Warm with the breath of kine ; 
And Venus loves the whispers 

Of plighted youth and maid, 
In April's ivory moonlight 

Beneath the chestnut shade. 

XIX. 

" But thy father loves the clashing 
Of broadsword and of shield ; 



LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 259 

He loves to drink the steam that reeks 

From the fresh battle-field ; 
He smiles a smile more dreadful 

Than his own dreadful frown, 
When he sees the thick black cloud of smoke 

Go up from the conquered town. 

XX. 

" And such as is the War-god, 

The author of thy line, 
And such as she who suckled thee, 

Even such be thou and thine. 
Leave to the soft Campanian 

His baths and his perfumes ; 
Leave to the sordid race of Tyre 

Their dyeing-vats and looms ; 
Leave to the sons of Carthage 

The rudder and the oar ; 
Leave to the Greek his marble Nymphs, 

And scrolls of wordy lore. 

XXI. 

" Thine, Roman, is the pilum ; 

Roman, the sword is thine. 
The even trench, the bristling mound, 

The legion's ordered line ; 
And thine the wheels of triumph, 

Which with their laurelled train 
Move slowly up the shouting streets 

To Jove's eternal fane. 



260 READINGS FROM MA CA ULA Y. 

XXII. 

" Beneath thy yoke the Volscian 

Shall veil his lofty brow ; 
Soft Capua's curled revellers 

Before thy chairs shall bow ; 
The Lucumoes of Arnus 

Shall quake thy rods to see ; 
And the proud Samnite's heart of steel 

Shall yield to only thee. 

XXIII. 

" The Gaul shall come against thee 
From the land of snow and night : 

Thou shalt give his fair-haired armies 
To the raven and the kite. 

XXIV. 

" The Greek shall come against thee, 

The conqueror of the East. 
Beside him stalks to battle 

The huge earth-shaking beast, — 
The beast on whom the castle 

With all its guards doth stand, 
The beast who hath between his eyes 

The serpent for a hand. 
First march the bold Epirotes, 

Wedged close with shield and spear; 
And the ranks of false Tarentum 

Are glittering in the rear. 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME, 26 1 

XXV. 

'^ The ranks of false Tarentum 

Like hunted sheep shall fly : 
In vain the bold Epirotes 

Shall round their standards die. 
And Apennine's gray vultures 

Shall have a noble feast 
On the fat and the eyes 

Of the huge earth-shaking beast. 

XXVI. 

" Hurrah ! for the good weapons 

That keep the War-god's land. 
Hurrah ! for Rome's stout pilum 

In a stout Roman hand. 
Hurrah ! for Rome's short broadsword 

That through the thick array 
Of levelled spears and serried shields, 

Hews deep its gory way. 

XXVII. 

" Hurrah ! for the great triumph 

That stretches many a mile. 
Hurrah ! for the wan captives 

That pass in endless file. 
Ho ! bold Epirotes, whither 

Hath the Red King ta'en flight? 
Ho ! dogs of false Tarentum, 

Is not the gown washed white ? 



262 READINGS FROM MACAULAY. 

XXVIIT. 

" Hurrah ! for the great triumph 

That stretches many a mile. 
Hurrah ! for the rich dye of Tyre, 

And the fine web of Nile, 
The helmets gay with plumage 

Torn from the pheasant's wings, 
The belts set thick with starry gems 

That shone on Indian kings. 
The urns of massy silver, 

The goblets rough with gold, 
The many- colored tablets bright 

With loves and wars of old. 
The stone that breathes and struggles. 

The brass that seems to speak ; — 
Such cunning they who dwell on high 

Have given unto the Greek. 

XXIX. 

" Hurrah ! for Manius Curius, 

The bravest son of Rome, 
Thrice in utmost need sent forth. 

Thrice drawn in triumph home. 
Weave, weave, for Manius Curius 

The third embroidered gown ; 
Make ready the third lofty car. 

And twine the third green crown ; 
And yoke the steeds of Rosea 

With necks like a bended bow ; 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 26^ 

And deck the bull, Mevania's bull, 
The bull as white as snow. 

XXX. 

" Blest and thrice blest the Roman 

Who sees Rome's brightest day. 
Who sees that long victorious pomp 

Wind down the Sacred *Way, 
And through the bellowing Forum, 

And round the Suppliant's Grove, 
Up to the everlasting gates 

Of Capitolian Jove. 

XXXI. 

'^ Then where, o'er two bright havens, 

The towers of Corinth frown ; 
Where the gigantic King of Day 

On his own Rhodes looks down ; 
Where soft Orontes murmurs 

Beneath the laurel-shades ; 
Where Nile reflects the endless length 

Of dark red colonnades ; 
Where in the still deep water, 

Sheltered from waves and blasts, 
Bristles the dusky forest 

Of Byrsa's thousand masts ; 
Where fur-clad hunters wander 

Amidst the northern ice ; 
Where through the sand of morning-land 

The camel bears the spice ; 



264 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY, 

Where Atlas flings his shadow 
Far o'er the Western foam, — 

Shall be great fear on all who hear 
The mighty name of Rome." 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME, 26$ 



POMPEII. 

A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL AT 
THE CAAIBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT, JULY, 1819. 



O land ! to Mem'ry and to Freedom dear. 
Land of the melting lyre and conqu'ring spear, 
Land of the vine-clad hill, the fragrant grove. 
Of arts and arms, of Genius and of Love, 
Hear, fairest Italy. Tho' now no more 
Thy glitt'ring eagles awe th' Atlantic shore, 
Nor at thy feet the gorgeous Orient flings 
The blood-bought treasures of her tawny Kings, 
Tho' vanish'd all that form'd thine old renown. 
The laurel garland, and the jewell'd crown, 
Th' avenging poniard, the victorious sword. 
Which rear'd thine empire, or thy rights restor'd, 
Yet still the constant Muses haunt thy shore, 
And love to linger where they dwelt of yore. 
If e'er of old they deign'd, with fav'ring smile. 
To tread the sea-girt shores of Albion's isle. 
To smooth with classic arts our rugged tongue. 
And warm with classic glow the British song, 



266 READINGS FROM MA CAUL AY. 

Oh ! bid them snatch their silent harps which wave 
On the lone oak that shades thy Maro's grave/ 
And sweep with magic hand the slumb'ring strings, 
To fire the poet. — For thy chme he sings, 
Thy scenes of gay delight and wild despair. 
Thy vary'd forms of awful and of fair. 

How rich that climate's sweets, how wild its storms, 
What charms array it, and what rage deforms. 
Well have thy mould'ring walls, Pompeii, known, 
Deck'd in those charms, and by that rage o'erthrown. 
Sad City, gayly dawn'd thy latest day, 
And pour'd its radiance on a scene as gay. 
The leaves scarce rustled in the sighing breeze ; 
In azure dimples curl'd the sparkling seas, 
And, as the golden tide of light they quaff'd, 
Campania's sunny meads and vineyards laugh'd, 
While gleam'd each lichen'd oak and giant pine, 
On the far sides of swarthy Apennine. 

Then mirth and music thro' Pompeii rung ; 
Then verdant wreaths on all her portals hung ; 
Her sons with solemn rite and jocund lay 
Hail'd the glad splendors of that festal day. 
With fillets bound the hoary priests advance, 
And rosy virgins braid the choral dance. 
The rugged warrior here unbends a while 
His iron front, and deigns a transient smile. 
There, frantic with delight, the ruddy boy 
Scarce treads on earth, and bounds and laughs with joy. 

^ See Eustace's description of the Tomb of Virgil, on the Neapolitan 
coast. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 26/ 

From ev'ry crowded altar, perfumes rise 
In billowy clouds of fragrance to the skies. 
The milk-white monarch of the herd they lead, 
With gilded horns, at yonder shrine to bleed ; 
And while the victim crops the broider'd plain, 
And frisks and gambols tow'rds the destin'd fane, 
They little deem that like himself they stray 
To death, unconscious, o'er a flow'ry way, 
Heedless, like him, th' impending stroke await, 
And sport and wanton on the brink of fate. 

What 'vails it that where yonder heights aspire, 
With ashes pil'd, and scath'd with rills of fire, 
Gigantic phantoms dimly seem'd to glide,^ 
In misty files, along the m^ountain's side, 
To view with threat'ning scowl your fated lands, 
And tow'rd your city point their shadowy hands ? 
In vain celestial omens prompted fear. 
And nature's signals spoke the ruin near. 
In vain thro' many a night ye view'd from far 
The meteor flag of elemental war 
Unroll its blazing folds from yonder height. 
In fearful sign of earth's intestine fight. 
In vain Vesuvius groan'd with wrath supprest. 
And mutter'd thunder in his burning breast. 
Long since the Eagle from that flaming peak 
Hath soar'd with screams a safer nest to seek. 



^ Dio Cassius relates that figures of gigantic size appeared, for some time 
previous to the destruction of Pompeii, on the summits of Vesuvius. This 
appearance was probably occasioned by the fantastic forms which the smoke 
from the crater of the volcano assumed. 



268 READINGS FROM MACAULAY, 

Aw'd by th' infernal beacon's fitful glare, 
The howling fox hath left his wonted lair ; 
Nor dares the browsing goat in vent'rous leap 
To spring as erst from dizzy steep to steep. — 
Man only mocks the peril. Man alone 
Defies the sulph'rous flame, the warning groan ; 
While instinct, humbler guardian, wakes and saves, 
Proud reason sleeps, nor knows the doom it braves. 

But see, the op'ning theatre invites 
The fated myriads to its gay delights. 
In, in, they swarm, tumultuous as the roar 
Of foaming breakers on a rocky shore. 
Th' enraptur'd throng in breathless transport views 
The gorgeous temple of the Tragic Muse. 
There, while her wand in shadowy pomp arrays 
Ideal scenes, and forms of other days, 
Fair as the hopes of youth, a radiant band. 
The sister arts around her footstool stand, 
To deck their Queen, and lend a milder grace 
To the stern beauty of that awful face. 
Far, far, around the ravish'd eye surveys 
The sculptur'd forms of Gods and Heroes blaze. 
Above, the echoing roofs the peal prolong 
Of lofty converse, or melodious song, 
While, as the tones of passion sink or swell. 
Admiring thousands own the moral spell. 
Melt with the melting strains of fancy'd woe, 
With terror sicken, or with transport glow. 

Oh ! for a voice like that which peal'd of old 
Thro' Salem's cedar courts and shrines of gold, 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 269 

And in wild accents round the trembling dome 
Proclaim'd the havoc of avenging Rome, 
While ev'ry palmy arch and sculptur'd tow'r 
Shook with the footsteps of the parting pow'r. 
Such voice might check your tears, which idly stream 
For the vain phantoms of the poet's dream ; 
Might bid those terrors rise, those sorrows flow, 
For other perils, and for nearer woe. 

The hour is come. Ev'n now the sulph'rous cloud 
Involves the city in its fun'ral shroud, 
And far along Campania's azure sky 
Expands its dark and boundless canopy. 
The Sun, tho' thron'd on heav'n's meridian height, 
Burns red and rayless thro' that sickly night. 
Each bosom felt at once the shudd'ring thrill. 
At once the music stopp'd. The song was still. 
None in that cloud's portentous shade might trace 
The fearful changes of another's face, 
But thro' that horrid stillness each could hear 
His neighbor's throbbing heart beat high with fear. 

A moment's pause succeeds. Then wildly rise 
Griefs sobbing plaints, and terror's frantic cries. 
The gates recoil, and tow'rds the narrow pass 
In wild confusion rolls the living mass. 
Death, — when thy shadowy sceptre waves away 
From his sad couch the pris'ner of decay, 
Tho' friendship view the close with glist'ning eye, 
And love's fond lips imbibe the parting sigh. 
By torture rack'd, by kindness sooth'd in vain. 
The soul still clings to being and to pain ; 



270 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

But when have wilder terrors cloth'd thy brow, 
Or keener torments edg'd thy dart than now, 
When with thy regal horrors vainly strove 
The laws of nature and the power of Love? 
On mothers babes in vain for mercy call : 
Beneath the feet of brothers, brothers fall. 
Behold the dying wretch in vain upraise 
Tow'rds yonder well-known face the accusing gaze 
See trampl'd to the earth th' expiring maid 
Clings round her lover's feet, and shrieks for aid. 
Vain is th' imploring glance, the frenzy'd cry : 
All, all is fear ; — To succor is to die. — 
Saw ye how wild, how red, how broad a light 
Burst on the darkness of that mid-day night, 
As fierce Vesuvius scatter'd o'er the vale 
His drifted flames and sheets of burning hail, 
Shook hell's wan light'nings from his blazing cone. 
And gilded heav'n with meteors not its own? 

The morn all blushing rose, but sought in vain 
The snowy villas and the flow'ry plain. 
The purple hills with marshall'd vineyards gay. 
The domes that sparkled in the sunny ray. 
Where art or nature late had deck'd the scene 
With blazing marble or with spangled green, 
There, streak'd by many a fiery torrent's bed, 
A boundless waste of hoary ashes spread. 

Along that dreary waste where lately rung 
The festal lay which smiling virgins sung. 
Where rapture echoed from the warbling lute, 
And the gay dance resounded, all is mute. — 



LAVS OF ANCIENT ROME. 2/1 

Mute ! — Is it Fancy shapes that wailing sound 
Which faintly murmurs from the blasted ground? 
Or live there still, who, breathing in the tomb, 
Curse the dark refuge which delays their doom, 
In massive vaults, on which th' incumbent plain 
And ruin'd city heap their weight in vain? 
Oh ! who may sing that hour of mortal strife, 
When Nature calls on Death, yet clings to life ? 
Who paint the wretch that draws sepulchral breath, 
A living pris'ner in the house of Death ? 
Pale as the corpse which loads the fun'ral pile. 
With face convuls'd that writhes a ghastly smile, 
Behold him speechless move with hurry'd pace, 
Incessant, round his dungeon's caverned space, 
Now shriek in terror, and now groan in pain. 
Gnaw his white lips, and strike his burning brain, 
Till Fear o'erstrain'd in stupor dies away. 
And Madness wrests her victim from dismay. 
His arms sink down : his wild and stony eye 
Glares without sight on blackest vacancy. 
He feels not, sees not : wrapp'd in senseless trance, 
His soul is still and listless as his glance. 
One cheerless blank, one rayless mist, is there. 
Thoughts, senses, passions, live not with despair. 

Haste, Famine, haste, to urge the destin'd close, 
And lull the horrid scene to stern repose. 
Yet ere, dire Fiend, thy ling'ring tortures cease, 
And all be hush'd in still sepulchral peace. 
Those caves shall wilder, darker deeds behold 
Than e'er the voice of song or fable told, 



2/2 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y, 

Whate'er dismay may prompt, or madness dare, 
Feasts of the grave, and banquets of despair. — 
Hide, hide, the scene ; and o'er the blasting sight 
Fling the dark veil of ages and of night. 

Go, seek Pompeii now : — with pensive tread 
Roam thro' the silent city of the dead. 
Explore each spot, where still, in ruin grand, 
Her shapeless piles and tott'ring columns stand, 
Where the pale ivy's clasping wreaths o'ershade 
The ruin'd temple's moss-clad colonnade, 
Or violets on the hearth's cold marble wave. 
And muse in silence on a people's grave. 

Fear not. — No sign of death thine eyes shall 
scare : 
No, all is beauty, verdure, fragrance there. 
A gentle slope includes the fatal ground 
With od'rous shrubs and tufted myrtles crown'd : 
Beneath, o'ergrown with grass, or wreath'd with flow'rs, 
Lie tombs and temples, columns, baths, and towers. 
As if in mock'ry. Nature seems to dress 
In all her charms the beauteous wilderness. 
And bids her gayest flow'rets twine and bloom 
In sweet profusion o'er a city's tomb. 
With roses here she decks th' untrodden path. 
With lilies fringes there the stately bath, 
Th' acanthus' spreading foliage here she weaves ^ 
Round the gay capital which mocks its leaves, 

^ The capital of the Corinthian pillar is carved, as is well known, in imita- 
tion of the acanthus. Mons. de Chateaubriand, as I have found since this 
poem was written, has employed the same image in his Travels. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME. 273 

There hangs the sides of ev'ry mould'ring room 
With tap'stry from her own fantastic loom, 
Wall-flow'rs and weeds, whose glowing hues supply 
With simple grace the purple's Tyrian dye. 
The ruin'd city sleeps in fragrant shade, 
Like the pale corpse of some Athenian maid,' 
Whose marble arms, cold brows, and snowy neck, 
The fairest flow'rs of fairest climates deck, 
Meet types of her whose form their wreaths array, 
Of radiant beauty, and of swift decay. 

Advance, and wander on thro' crumbling halls, 
Thro' prostrate gates, and ivy'd pedestals. 
Arches, whose echoes now no chariots rouse. 
Tombs, on whose summits goats undaunted browse. 
See, where yon ruin'd wall on earth reclines. 
Thro' weeds and moss the half-seen painting shines, 
Still vivid 'midst the dewy cowslips glows. 
Or blends its colors with the blushing rose. 

Thou lovely, ghastly scene of fair decay, 
In beauty awful, and 'midst horrors gay. 
Renown more wide, more' bright, shall gild thy name. 
Than thy wild charms or fearful doom could claim. 

Immortal spirits, in whose deathless song 
Latiurn and Athens yet their reign prolong. 
And from their thrones of fame and empire hurl'd, 
Still sway the sceptre of the mental world. 
You, in whose breasts the flames of Pindus beam'd. 
Whose copious lips with rich persuasion stream'd, 

^ It is the custom of tha modern Greeks to adorn corpses profusely with 
flowers. 



274 READINGS FROM MAC AULA Y. 

Whose minds unravell'd nature's mystic plan. 
Or trac'd the mazy labyrinth of man ; 
Bend, glorious spirits, from your blissful bow'rs, 
And broider'd couches of unfading flow'rs, 
While round your locks th' Elysian garlands blow, 
With sweeter odors, and with brighter glow. 
Once more, immortal shades, atoning Fame 
Repairs the honors of each glorious name. 
Behold Pompeii's op'ning vaults restore 
The long-lost treasures of your ancient lore, 
The vestal radiance of poetic fire, 
The stately buskin, and the tuneful lyre, 
The wand of eloquence, whose magic sway 
The sceptres and the swords of earth obey, 
And ev'ry mighty spell, whose strong control 
Could nerve or melt, could fire or soothe, the soul. 

And thou, sad city, raise thy drooping head, 
And share the honors of the glorious dead. 
Had Fate repriev'd thee till the frozen North 
Pour'd in wild swarms its hoarded millions forth, 
Till blazing cities mark'd where Albion trod. 
Or Europe quak'd beneath the scou7^ge of GoD,^ 
No lasting wreath had grac'd thy fun'ral pall, 
No fame redeem'd the horrors of thy fall. 
Now shall thy deathless mem'ry live entwin'd 
With all that conquers, rules, or charms the mind, 
Each lofty thought of Poet or of Sage, 
Each grace of Virgil's lyre, or Tully's page. 

^ The well-known name of Attila. 



LA YS OF ANCIENT ROME, 275 

Like theirs whose Genius consecrates thy tomb, 
Thy fame shall snatch from time a greener bloom, 
Shall spread where'er the Muse has rear'd her throne, 
And live renown'd in accents yet unknown : 
Earth's utmost bounds shall join the glad acclaim, 
And distant Camus bless Pompeii's name. 



